Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — HIGH COMMISSION TERRITORIES

Administration

Mr. Stonehouse: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations what plans he now has for the future administration of the Protectorates of Bechuanaland, Basutoland and Swaziland, in view of the intention of the Union of South Africa to become a republic.

The Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations (Mr. Duncan Sandys): I see no reason why the intention of the Union of South Africa to become a Republic should in itself make necessary any change in the administration of the High Commission Territories.

Mr. Stonehouse: Is the Secretary of State aware that there is great resentment in the three Protectorates at the fact that the administration of these Territories is handled by a High Commissioner who is also our diplomatic representative in the Union, and does not the Report of the Morse Economic Survey Mission reveal that there has been a lack of dynamism in the economic development of these Protectorates? Further, is not the administration of the Bechuanaland Protectorate from Mafeking completely out of date? Will not the right hon. Gentleman see that the headquarters of the administration are transferred into the Bechuanaland Protectorate?

Mr. Sandys: The hon. Gentleman has asked me a number of supplementary questions. I will not speak about dynamics. On the other two points, these Territories are linked very closely geographically and economically with

the Union of South Africa and are, in some cases, completely surrounded by its territories. Therefore, I believe that there are practical advantages in combining the post of British High Commmissioner in South Africa with that of High Commissioner for the High Commission Territories. On the other point raised by the hon. Gentleman, there would no doubt be some practical advantage in moving the headquarters of the Administration from Mafeking, which is in the Union, into the territory of the Bechuanaland Protectorate, but this, undoubtedly, would be quite expensive and in my view we have more urgent purposes to which I should like to devote such money as is available.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House that he is giving urgent consideration to the Morse Report mentioned by my hon. Friend, and will he in particular give personal consideration to the question of developing education there as quickly as possible?

Mr. Sandys: Certainly.

Oral Answers to Questions — BECHUANALAND

Bushmen

Miss Vickers: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations whether, in the new Constitution for the Bechuanaland Protectorate, he proposes to have a representative on the Legislative Council who will have the special responsibility of representing Bushmen.

Mr. Sandys: The Bechuanaland Protectorate Government will continue to be directly responsible for the welfare of Bushmen; and the official members of the Legislative Council will have the duty to watch their interests.

Miss Vickers: May I ask my right hon. Friend whether, in view of the fact that these are a small group of people, about 11,000 in all, who are practically illiterate, it would not be very much better to have a protector for the Bushmen representing them on the Legislative Council as, he may remember, was previously done in Malaya?

Mr. Sandys: As my hon. Friend knows, these people are not in themselves sufficiently advanced to be directly


represented on the Legislature, and the method that she has suggested is one method of securing representation. We feel that the duty which is placed upon the Government themselves is probably the most effective safeguard for the Bushmen, but, as an additional safeguard, the new Constitution does provide that when necessary outside persons may be invited to attend and speak at meetings of the Legislative and Executive Councils.

Mr. Brockway: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he would consider that one of the official representatives should have a special responsibility for these Bushmen who have no representation and who, as the right hon. Gentleman says, are probably incapable of voicing their own needs? Could not one of the official representatives be given this special responsibility?

Mr. Sandys: I will look at that possibility, but, on the whole, I prefer to feel that the whole Government regard themselves as having responsibility for looking after these people.

Oral Answers to Questions — SOUTHERN RHODESIA

Situation

Mr. Brockway: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations if he will introduce legislation to suspend the Constitution of Southern Rhodesia, in view of the dangers of the situation arising from the arrest of unemployed Africans, the mobilisation of the territorial forces, and the proposed limitation of African membership in the Legislature to five in 50.

Mr. Sandys: No, Sir.

Mr. Brockway: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this Question was tabled before the developments of this week on which, if I may, I should like to give him qualified congratulations? When the Constitutional Conference takes place, will the right hon. Gentleman seek to ensure that the Africans have adequate representation and are not represented by only two of the representatives of the National Democratic Party out of the 24 or 26 who are likely to be there?

Mr. Sandys: There are several Questions on the Order Paper on that point.

Vagrancy Act, 1960

Mr. Brockway: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations if he will advise that the Vagrancy Act, 1960, be disallowed under the provisions of the Southern Rhodesia Constitutional Letters Patent of 1923 in view of its infringement of human rights.

Mr. Sandys: I am not satisfied that the circumstances would justify the exercise of this exceptional constitutional power.

Mr. Brockway: While recognising that this is exceptional, would not the right hon. Gentleman agree that a Bill which gives the police the right, without a warrant, to arrest a man only on the ground that he is unemployed, is contrary to all the principles of our Commonwealth? In view of that, will he urge the Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia to reconsider this very distasteful legislation?

Mr. Sandys: I am not sure that the hon. Member has quite accurately defined that provision in the Act. I have, naturally, looked at this very closely and have taken advice upon it. I am not sure that it would necessarily, as the hon. Member has assumed, infringe the provisions of the Code of the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides specifically for the detention of vagrants.

Mr. Stonehouse: Is not the extent of this Measure deplorable? Hundreds of Africans are being picked up off the streets, and their only offence is that they cannot find a job. What is the Secretary of State doing to secure the release of British-protected persons and British citizens who have been arrested under the terms of this Act?

Mr. Brockway: Fifteen hundred of them.

Mr. Sandys: I do not think that that is the figure. I have already given information to the House about the numbers. I have not got them with me today, but I have been asked a Question about them. I have given them and I think that the picture is very different from what has been suggested.

Mr. Callaghan: May we have the Government's position made clear? They have power, in their view, to act, but


have decided not to act, to disallow this legislation. That is the first question to which the country would like an answer.
The second question to which the country would also like an answer is whether, even assuming that they have not the power to act, the Government propose to take up this issue with the Southern Rhodesian Prime Minister, in view of the repugnance with which this Act is viewed and judged by most people in this country.

Mr. Sandys: We have to behave very carefully in a matter of this kind. When Parliament gives powers to a Territory for which we are responsible, and confers constitutional powers upon it, we must be very careful not to do its job for it. We get into very great difficulty if we start duplicating the executive powers or the legislative powers of a Territory overseas.
Parliament has decided to confer powers upon the Legislature of Southern Rhodesia. Southern Rhodesia has exercised these powers in this manner. We have certain reserve powers provided for in the Constitution. Clearly, however, these reserve powers are only intended to be used, and it would be proper only to use them, in the most exceptional circumstances. It would be highly dangerous and highly improper if the British Government were expected to look at every Act passed by the Southern Rhodesian Legislature and to decide whether in all respects we approved of that legislation. It is only in the most exceptional case that we should use these exceptional powers.

Mr. Speaker: Mr. Biggs-Davison. Question No. 6.

Mr. Callaghan: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Are we not to be allowed the opportunity of taking this matter further now?

Mr. Speaker: I get into severe trouble with the House if we do not get on with Questions.

Mr. Callaghan: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the grave dissatisfaction with the nature of the Secretary of State's reply, I must give notice that we shall seek to return to this matter later, on the Adjournment or in any other way.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: Question No. 6.

Mr. Stonehouse: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I seek your guidance? I have put a Question about British-protected persons and British citizens who have been arrested in Southern Rhodesia. How can we secure a reply from the Secretary of State in view of his refusal to answer that point today?

Mr. Speaker: I cannot compel Ministers to answer anything.

Mr. Sandys: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I thought that I had explained to the House that I had already answered a Question on that point. If the hon. Member will look it up in HANSARD he will see the figures.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. Several hon. Members are rising to points of order. Mr. Stonehouse.

Mr. Stonehouse: Further to that point of order. I have already asked the Secretary of State for the numbers involved, but he has not been prepared to take action to secure the release of the British protected persons and British subjects. It was that question which I asked him today.

Mr. Speaker: If he has not answered it—I shall have to look at the context to find out—the hon. Member for Wednesbury (Mr. Stonehouse) is at liberty to put down a further Question.

Mr. P. Williams: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. We have had supplementary questions on a number of important subjects, but it appears, unfortunately, that no one on this side of the House has caught your eye.

Hon. Members: Oh.

Mr. Speaker: Order. We cannot discuss the matter of whom I select or see in the middle of Question Time. Mr. Biggs-Davison.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: Question No. 6.

Mr. Brockway: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I also indicate that in view of the unsatisfactory nature of the Secretary of State's reply—

Mr. Speaker: No. I do not think that the hon. Member can do so—unless I am confused. The matter is barred by the indication of the hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) from the Front Bench.

Mr. Sandys: I am sorry that the hon. Member for Eton and Slough (Mr. Brockway) now adds dissatisfaction to his earlier qualified congratulations.

Oral Answers to Questions — RHODESIA AND NYASALAND

Situation

Mr. Biggs-Davison: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations if he is aware of growing distrust in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland towards the United Kingdom Government and its intentions in Central Africa, as disclosed in the statement by Sir Roy Welensky in the Federal Assembly; and, in view of the forthcoming constitutional conference, what steps he is taking to remove such distrust at the present time.

Mr. Sandys: I realise that all the peoples of the Federation are going through a very anxious time. I hope that the personal contacts and direct discussions which we shall be having during the next few weeks will help to dispel any misunderstandings there may be.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: In view of the prevailing uncertainty since the Monckton Commission, and the violent racialism of certain demagogic leaders, will my right hon. Friend do what he can to reassure men of all races in the Federation who want partnership, and who are in many cases standing up to the most atrocious political terrorism because they believe in partnership and Federation?

Mr. Sandys: We intend honourably to discharge our duty to all peoples and all races in the Federation.

Oral Answers to Questions — PAKISTAN

Cyclones (Relief)

Mr. Fisher: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations whether it is proposed that the United

Kingdom Government should give any further assistance to the victims of the recent cyclones in Pakistan.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations what is the latest information he has received from the Government of Pakistan regarding the loss of life and the damage to property caused by the recent cyclones in East Pakistan; and what further help Her Majesty's Government propose to give.

Mr. Sandys: The loss of life in the two cyclones is estimated at 10,000. A large number of people are homeless; the port equipment of Chittagong was severely damaged; and there was other widespread damage to property. There were also serious losses of cattle. Since these are used for ploughing, this has created a special problem.
As a practical sign of sympathy, Her Majesty's Government have made cash donations amounting to three lakhs of rupees. We have also offered to provide tractors and tents to the value of £50,000. These will be shipped as soon as possible.
The House will be asked in due course to vote the necessary supplementary estimate. In the meantime an advance is being made from the Civil Contingencies Fund.
I am sure that the House will wish to join with me in expressing our sincere sympathy to the people of Pakistan.

Mr. Fisher: I thank my right hon. Friend for the Government's generous reaction to this disaster. Have other Commonwealth countries also made contributions?

Mr. Thomson: May I associate my hon. and right hon. Friends with the Minister's expression of sympathy, and may I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on having reconsidered this matter and having generously increased the donation of one lakh of rupees which was to have been made by Her Majesty's Government?

Oral Answers to Questions — CENTRAL AFRICAN FEDERATION

Federal Review Conference

Mr. Fisher: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations


whether he will now state when constitutional talks are to take place on Southern Rhodesia, and who the African delegates to this conference will be.

Mr. Stonehouse: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations if he is now in a position to state details of the delegations appointed to attend the Federal Review Conference.

Mr. G. M. Thomson: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations what information he has received regarding African representation on the delegations from Southern Rhodesia for the talks on future constitutional changes in that territory and for the conference to review the constitution of the Central African Federation.

Mr. Sandys: I will circulate in HANSARD the names of delegates as far as they have been received.
In all, there will probably be about sixty delegates from the Federation and the three Territories. Of these, about half will be Europeans.
The final list of the Southern Rhodesia Delegation is not yet available, but if the invitations issued by Sir Edgar Whitehead are accepted, the delegation will consist of about nineteen members, of whom about half are likely to be Europeans.
The Southern Rhodesia Constitutional Conference will be held concurrently with the Federal Review Conference.

Mr. Fisher: If reports in the newspapers are correct, may I express my appreciation for what I should like to describe as the constructive realism of my right hon. Friend in securing representation from the N.D.P. and assure him, I am sure on behalf of the whole House, of our best wishes for the successful outcome of these very difficult but highly important Central African conferences which are about to take place?

Mr. Sandys: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his good wishes and I will certainly need any good luck I can get. The composition of the Southern Rhodesian delegation is not a matter on which I took any decision. The decisions were taken by the Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia.

Mr. Stonehouse: May I, from the back benches on this side of the House, confirm what has been said by the hon. Member for Surbiton (Mr. Fisher) and congratulate the Secretary of State on the initiative he took to ensure that the National Democratic Party was represented at the Federal Review Conference, and also wish him luck in the conference? However, will he ensure that, specifically on the question of the Southern Rhodesia review, African participation is adequate enough to ensure that the nine-tenths of the population of Southern Rhodesia which is black are having a fair expression of opinion?

Mr. Sandys: The hon. Gentleman must not embarrass me with too many congratulations on this rather delicate point. I explained that about half the delegation from Southern Rhodesia would be European and I expect that the remainder will be African, with possibly two exceptions—there may be one Asian and one coloured representative. However, before saying anything definite, I must wait for the final list. We are not going to count noses at a conference of this kind, and what is essential is that all points of view should be properly represented.

Mr. Callaghan: I do not wish to congratulate the right hon. Gentleman, because I have no desire to get him into trouble with some Members of his party. Can he explain a little more the status of the delegates to the conference? Will they all have the same ability to express their views? In other words, will they all be full members of the conference so that there is complete expression of opinion?

Mr. Sandys: All delegates will be equal.

The following is the list of names available at present:

United Kingdom
Mr. Harold Macmillan.
Mr. Duncan Sandys.
Mr. Iain Macleod.
The Earl of Perth.
Mr. C. J. M. Alport.
Mr. B. F. St. J. Trend.
Sir John Martin.
Sir Henry Lintott.
Mr. J. C. McPetrie.
Sir Ralph Hone.

Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland

Northern Rhodesia

Nyasaland

Southern Rhodesia

The final list of the Southern Rhodesia Delegation is not available, but if the invitations issued by Sir Edgar Whitehead are accepted, the Delegation will consist of about 19 members of whom 10 will be Europeans.

Of the above 71, 42 will be European.

Mr. F. I. Williams (Deportation)

Mr. D. Foot: asked the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations whether any representations have been, or will be, made by the United Kingdom High Commissioner to the Government of the Central African Federation regarding the deportation of Mr. Francis Ivor Williams, a United Kingdom citizen; and whether the Federal Government has indicated the reasons for such deportation.

Mr. Sandys: No, Sir.

Mr. Foot: Does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that this gentleman is merely the latest addition to a long and distinguished list of prohibited immigrants in Central Africa? Is it not abundantly clear that the immigration laws are now being used as an instrument of persecution against United Kingdom citizens of whose views or activities the Federal Government happens to disapprove?

Mr. Sandys: I believe that I am right in saying that in the last several years, apart from this case, there has been only one case of a United Kingdom citizen—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."]—let me finish my sentence—who is domiciled in the Federation being deported.

Mr. Callaghan: With blue eyes. Is not the Minister aware that if he did not make all those limitations the number would be far bigger? May I now have an answer to the question which I asked earlier when I said that there was great repugnance about some of these actions? When he is seeing the Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia about these constitutional talks, will he inform him of the state of opinion in this country about these matters and ask him to desist from these actions, both by himself and by the Federal Prime Minister—to whom he can make representations—so that we can get on better terms with them?

Mr. Sandys: Any talks which I have with the Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia will obviously be free, will be full and frank, and will also be confidential.

Oral Answers to Questions — EDUCATION

Morpeth Boys' Grammar School

Mr. Owen: asked the Minister of Education what steps are being taken to deal with the overcrowding at the Morpeth Boys' Grammar School; and whether he will make a statement.

The Minister of Education (Sir David Eccles): The local education authority put forward for the 1962–63 building programme a proposal to rebuild this school on another site. I regret that resources could not be found for this in the 1962–63 programme but I will consider it for a later programme. New buildings have been approved for the neighbouring girls' school and when


these are completed the present girls' school buildings may be used for the time being to relieve the boys' school.

Mr. Owen: Is the Minister aware that there is an urgent need for this matter to be speeded up? Is he aware that both staff and students are frustrated by the prevailing overcrowding, and that there are more than thirty students in the top class at a time when individual instruction is vital to their subsequent careers? Will he reconsider this matter to see whether something can be done to speed it up?

Sir D. Eccles: I am aware that the buildings are overcrowded and I shall shortly be considering the 1963–64 programme.

Dental Inspection, Leicestershire

Mr. Janner: asked the Minister of Education whether he is aware that a number of children in Leicestershire have not had a school dental inspection for five years; and what steps he is taking to deal with the position.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education (Mr. Kenneth Thompson): Yes, Sir. The basic problem is the general shortage of dentists, and my right hon. Friend is consulting with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health to see what further can be done to improve the school dental service while the shortage continues.

Mr. Janner: Does the hon. Gentleman realise that his right hon. Friend and the other right hon. Gentlemen have been consulting for a long time, and that in the meanwhile children's teeth are decaying? Is he not prepared to do something to encourage dentists to enter this side of the profession, even though there is a shortage, as is generally understood, in the profession as a whole? Is he aware that this is a serious difficulty, because the cost of attending to their teeth later will be much higher than it would be if the children's teeth were cared for now?

Mr. Thompson: My right hon. Friend is very much aware of these considerations and very concerned about them. We are trying to find in what ways recruitment into the service can be improved, and we are continuing to make the best possible use of those dentists who are in it.

Library Service

Mr. Fitch: asked the Minister of Education if his attention has been drawn to paragraph 96 of the Roberts Report; and what proposals he has to make.

Sir D. Eccles: Since the hon. Member raised this question previously, I have entered into discussions with the local authorities about the future of the library service in the light of the Government's decision to introduce legislation and further studies are envisaged. The provision of adequate and properly qualified staff is of great importance in the running of an efficient service and I know that the local authorities are fully aware of the comments of the Roberts Report on this matter.

Mr. Fitch: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that reply. Is he aware that there is still dissatisfaction among librarians about their salaries, and that there has been no improvement since the publication of the Roberts Report in February, 1959?

Sir D. Eccles: I hope that paragraph 96 will be acted upon.

Mrs. White: What are the results of the inquiry which the right hon. Gentleman promised to make into the wastage of librarians? Does the right hon. Gentleman have that information?

Sir D. Eccles: Not without notice.

Mrs. White: The Minister promised last March, in reply to a Question, that he would make this inquiry, and I think that we are therefore entitled to ask what the results have been.

Sir D. Eccles: If the hon. Lady will put down a Question, I will do my best to give her an answer.

Building Programme, Cornwall

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: asked the Minister of Education whether he has reconsidered his decision to cut the major school building programme in Cornwall; and if he will make a statement.

Sir D. Eccles: I would refer my hon. Friend to the speech of my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary in


the House yesterday. The programme for 1962–63 is lower than in previous years because no more building is required in Cornwall for reorganisation of all-age schools.

Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Is my right hon. Friend aware that his hon. Friend's speech last night was most unsatisfactory from Cornwall's point of view and that, although no more rebuilding is needed for reorganisation, many schools are in a terrible state of repair at the moment and that children are working in extremely adverse conditions? Will he reconsider his decision particularly for technical education?

Sir D. Eccles: As soon as I can, I will approve proposals for schools which need to be replaced, but the policy for the building of secondary schools at the moment is to give reorganisation top priority.

Mr. Hayman: Is the Minister aware that to complete the development programme for the fifty-one secondary schools in Cornwall, some of which need replacement, will take twenty-five years at the present rate of replacement which he has approved? Will he do something to improve on that position?

Sir D. Eccles: Clearly, the rate of replacement will change drastically as soon as we have finished reorganisation in other areas.

Financial Year for which proposals were made
England and Wales
Bristol





Number of projects proposed
Number of projects approved
Number of projects proposed
Number of projects approved


†1960–1962 (two years)
…
…
…
2,365
1,215
12
6


1962–1963
…
…
…
1,658
605
9
3


1960–1963 (three years)
…
…
…
3,275*
1,820
15*
9


* In the total numbers of projects proposed for 1960–1963, projects submitted more than once have been counted once only.


† The two years, 1960–1961 and 1961–1962 cannot be distinguished because a number of authorities made their proposals for the two years together.

Shakespeare's Plays

Mr. Bence: asked the Minister of Education if he will consider the introduction of an expurgated copy of the plays of Shakespeare for use in schools.

School Building, Bristol

Mr. Awbery: asked the Minister of Education in how many cases the requests by local authorities for new schools were reduced by his Department during the past three years; what was the estimated number required by the Bristol authority during each of these three years; and to what extent They were reduced each year.

Sir D. Eccles: As the Answer contains a number of figures, I will, with permission, circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT. The hon. Member will see that approval was given to three-fifths of the Bristol proposals and about the same proportion in the country as a whole.

Mr. Awbery: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that when he asks local authorities for estimates of their requirements for the coming year, he expects them to use their judgment and commonsense, and that it is a reflection on them when he always decides to reduce the number of schools for which they have asked?

Sir D. Eccles: The method by which we plan the programme is the most sensible. We ask authorities to give us a list of their projects which they feel are most important and we then have to scale it down to the total which we are prepared to grant.

The following are the figures:

Sir D. Eccles: No, Sir. Shortened and expurgated editions are available if teachers wish to use them.

Mr. Bence: I was not thinking of the aesthetic nature of Shakespeare's words,


but of their prophetic nature. In view of current literary, theatrical and economic trends, in the interests of the morale of British youth would it not be as well to explain John of Gaunt's speech in Richard II:
This dear, dear land …
Is now leas'd out.

U.N.E.S.C.O.

Mr. Pavitt: asked the Minister of Education how the United Kingdom delegation to the Eleventh General Conference of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation was selected; to whom the delegation reports back; what form the report will take; and if he will make a statement.

Sir D. Eccles: The delegates were appointed by me after consultation with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland. A report will go to the National Commission. An account of the General Conference now proceeding will also he included in the annual report of my Department for 1960.

Mr. Pavitt: Is the Minister satisfied that he is getting sufficient participation of people in educational-scientific circles in the work of U.N.E.S.C.O. and particularly in this conference? Is this not rather a coterie which is being called upon from time to time, the same people without a sufficient spread of application?

Sir D. Eccles: The Answer to the next Question is relevant to the supplementary question which the hon. Member has just asked.

Mr. Pavitt: asked the Minister of Education how many meetings of the United Kingdom National Commission for the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation have been held since 1954.

Sir D. Eccles: The United Kingdom Committee, which acted as an Executive Committee of the National Commission, met four times after 1954. The reconstituted National Commission held its first meeting on 4th October in preparation far the present session of the General Conference of U.N.E.S.C.O.

Mr. Pavitt: Is the Minister satisfied that it is good enough that over six

years we have had only five meetings? The Commission has now been reconstituted, but the information available in the Library indicates that the United Kingdom makes a very poor show in relation to U.N.E.S.C.O. compared with other countries. Is it not time that this country played its proper part in U.N.E.S.C.O.?

Sir D. Eccles: We are trying at this conference to see whether we can change the emphasis of the work of U.N.E.S.C.O. If we are successful I think that will be a very good thing. I am determined to take more opportunities of consulting the National Commission in future.

Norfolk Education Committee (Deputation)

Mr. Hilton: asked the Minister of Education if he will now reconsider his decision not to receive a deputation from the Norfolk Education Committee.

Sir D. Eccles: No, Sir. I have offered to arrange for the deputation to be received by an officer of my Department.

Mr. Hilton: Why will the Minister not receive this deputation? Is he aware that Norfolk Education Committee is desperately anxious to plan its future educational programme, and that the fact that we have so much leeway to make up is because in the past the Minister has been so niggardly? We in Norfolk are not prepared to remain quiet while our education is sacrificed for the benefit of more populous areas. Will the right hon. Gentleman reconsider his decision and see this deputation from Norfolk?

Sir D. Eccles: Norfolk has done well in the past, as I remember from the time when I was last at the Ministry. There are 146 authorities. I think the hon. Member will agree that I could not agree to see them all myself.

Mr. Hilton: I only ask that the Minister should see the Norfolk authority.

Handicapped Children

Mr. Awbery: asked the Minister of Education what special provision is being made for the training of handicapped children in need of specialised training; what schools have been provided for this


purpose; what guidance has been given to local authorities for dealing with this problem; and if he will make a special grant to education committees to enable them to take a more active interest in this problem.

Mr. K. Thompson: Special educational treatment is provided for handicapped children both in ordinary schools and in more than 800 special schools. There are also a number of institutions specially approved by me for the provision of further education and training of blind, deaf and physically handicapped children. Expenditure on this work is assisted under the general grant arrangements.

Mr. Awbery: Is the Minister aware that in a large number of cities these unfortunate children are totally neglected? In some places it is left for charitable organisations to train them. Will he take steps to press on local education authorities the necessity of training these helpless little children?

Mr. Thompson: I think that most local authorities are aware of their responsibilities in this matter. If the hon. Member has examples of neglect such as he has described, I shall be pleased to have them and to look into them.

Teachers, County Durham and Gateshead

Dame Irene Ward: asked the Minister of Education whether he is aware that special bonus payments, outside the negotiated scales to teachers, are being offered by the Durham County Council and Gateshead Corporation in order to attract teachers; and, in view of the difficulties regarding recruitment of teachers generally, if he will consider issuing a circular to all local authorities giving guidance on this matter.

Sir D. Eccles: rose—

Mr. Moody: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I ask your guidance on an issue created by the Question which you have just called? Is it in order for an hon. Member to place a Question on the Order Paper without first ascertaining the facts of the situation? I have a letter from the director of education—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I understand that the hon. Member is seeking to

dispute the facts, but I think I should be allowing him to put himself out of order if I permitted him to do so. All I can say in answer to the point of order is that the particular hon. Member who tables a Question takes responsibility for the statements of fact in it.

Dame Irene Ward: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I say that there was a television showing in which this whole controversy was discussed?

Mr. Speaker: Order. I am not in my official capacity interested in the source of the hon. Lady's information, nor its reliability.

Mr. Short: On a slightly different but related point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I say that there is a courtesy in this House by which hon. Members do not put Questions about other constituencies without consulting the hon. Members concerned? In recent weeks the hon. Lady the Member for Tyne-mouth (Dame Irene Ward) on a number of occasions has interfered in other Tyneside constituencies.

Mr. Speaker: rose—

Mr. Short: Will you allow me to finish my point of order, Mr. Speaker?

Mr. Speaker: No, because what the hon. Member is saying is not for me. We had this kind of trouble the other day.

Mr. Short: The point was whether it could be made clear to the hon. Lady that, while she may be the Member for Tynemouth—

Mr. Speaker: Order. That does not raise a point of order for me.

Mr. Moody: Is it in order, Mr. Speaker, for an hon. Member to put a Question on the Order Paper based on something which is an absolute fallacy?

Mr. Speaker: That is not a matter of order for me. As I explained, the particular hon. Member putting a Question down himself or herself takes responsibility for the statements of fact in it. Sir David Eccles.

Sir D. Eccles: The provisions of the Burnham Report do not allow for any system of special allowances to act as an


inducement to recruitment in areas of teacher shortage.
I understand that the Durham authority has proposed to make the payments in question under the discretion given to authorities in the current Burnham Report to pay special allowances to unattached teachers who, in the authority's opinion, are undertaking duties and responsibilities equivalent to those of a head of department or of a teacher in a graded post.
Whether these particular payments are within the intention of the Burnham Report is a matter for the Burnham Reference Committee.

Dame Irene Ward: In view of the fact that my teachers in Whitley Bay have raised this issue, may I ask my right hon. Friend, in view of the importance of this matter and the general interest to teachers and local authorities, and as it is a general question, to be so kind as to assure me that the whole matter will be kept under careful review?

Sir D. Eccles: It is the business of the Burnham Reference Committee to look at allegations of this kind.

Mr. Randall: The right hon. Gentleman did not refer to Gateshead Corporation. I have in my possession a letter from Gateshead Education Committee in which it is made perfectly clear that no special bonus payments are made. Will he advise his hon. Lady—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."]—the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) not to continue fishing in foreign waters because, if she does, she might catch a large sized cod?

Sir D. Eccles: All I can say is that I am not my hon. Friend's teacher.

Grants to Students

Mr. Montgomery: asked the Minister of Education whether he is yet in a position to make a further statement on his consideration of the recommendations of the Anderson Committee on Grants to Students.

Sir D. Eccles: Yes, Sir. The Government have decided on the general lines of the radical revision of the scale of parental contributions which I announced in the House on the 7th November.
The details of this scale, which will come into force in October, 1961, will be published shortly, after I have consulted the local authority associations. In addition to university students, the new scale will apply also to students taking comparable courses in further education institutions and to teachers in training. No contribution will be required below £700—net scale income—and in general there will be a substantial reduction in the amounts which parents will be required to contribute. The Income Tax child allowance will be continued. The cost of the relaxation of the means test now proposed will be approximately £10 million in a full year. The system of making awards in Scotland differs in several respects from that in England and Wales and the application of the Government's decisions to Scotland is still under discussion. My right hon. Friend will make a statement as soon as possible.

Mr. Montgomery: While thanking my right hon. Friend for that Answer, and while I am glad that at least some advance is being made in this field, may I say that I am not altogether satisfied that the advance goes far enough? As we believe in the principle of free secondary education for all, and any child who passes for a grammar school gets a place irrespective of the parents' income, why cannot we transfer this further and give those with the necessary ability a place in further education irrespective of the parents' income.

Sir D. Eccles: This drastic relaxation of the means test is without prejudice to full abolition if on examination it should turn out to be the right thing to do.

Mrs. White: Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us what the net cost of the proposal will be? The gross cost is presumably £10 million, but the Treasury will recoup on the Income Tax side. Can he say what will be the net cost?

Sir D. Eccles: Not without notice, but the child allowance for Income Tax purposes is being continued and the effect of that is that poorer parents will be better off under this relaxation than they would be by complete abolition.

Mr. Chetwynd: Are we to understand from the Minister's statement that all


local education authorities are to apply this uniformly?

Sir D. Eccles: That is the intention.

Oral Answers to Questions — SCIENTIFIC AND INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH

Shipbuilding Industry (Report)

Mr. P. Williams: asked the Minister of Education, as representing the Minister for Science, whether he will continue to treat as confidential the Report of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research on the shipbuilding industry.

Sir David Eccles: As a result of discussions between the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Ministry of Transport and the Shipbuilding Conference, it has been agreed to publish the Report as soon as possible.

Mr. Williams: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the first reports of this D.S.I.R. Report appear to have been leaked from a source which I cannot name because I do not know it, and were very adverse to the reputation of the British shipbuilding industry, and that that is a practice which can only redound to the disadvantage of the British shipbuilding industry and, therefore, to our economy in general? Will he give the House an assurance that things of this nature will not happen again?

Sir D. Eccles: I cannot give that assurance—[HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"]—because I have no idea from What source the leak came—but I can assure my hon. Friend that publication of the Report will set those doubts at rest.

Mr. Willey: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that publication of the Report will be very welcome? Can he tell us whether the Report was prepared in consultation with the Advisory Committee of his right hon. Friend the Minister of Transport which is at present examining the shipbuilding industry?

Sir D. Eccles: The Report has been the subject of discussions with the industry and only this morning the industry and the Department agreed upon publication.

Mr. Williams: Is my right hon. Friend aware that when the Report was originally leaked it was at a stage when there had been no consultation with the industry? On what grounds can the D.S.I.R. possibly compile a report without consulting the industry?

Sir D. Eccles: The D.S.I.R. is perfectly entitled to compile a report in the preparation of which, in fact, it has taken a great deal of evidence from the industry.

Mr. Williams: No.

Biological Research Station, Leatherhead

Mr. Hector Hughes: asked the Minister of Education, as representing the Minister for Science, if he will give details of his plan to build and equip a biological research station at Leatherhead.

Sir D. Eccles: The research station at Leatherhead referred to in the hon. and learned Member's Question is planned by the British Industrial Biological Research Association. This is an autonomous industrial body and is not controlled by my noble Friend, although the D.S.I.R. will make a contribution to its finances. My noble Friend understands that the new laboratories will cover a total area of 5,150 sq. ft. and will cost the Association £56,000. The main purpose of the facilities is to investigate the effect on health of substances used in food manufacture, or which may find their way into food from things such as pesticides, packaging materials or utensils.

Mr. Hughes: Does the Minister realise that the Government are behaving in an anomalous fashion in this matter of research? While building this station at Leatherhead and equipping it, they are breaking up a world-famous research station of a similar character at Greyhope Road, Aberdeen, selling the apparatus at a loss, and breaking up a band of scientists who have done very good work. Will the right hon. Gentleman consult his colleagues with a view to getting rid of the anomaly and leaving the station at Greyhope Road to continue its good work?

Sir D. Eccles: The two projects are completely distinct. The Leatherhead site was chosen to enable some facilities to be shared with the British Food Manufacturing Industries Research Association. It has the additional advantage that the site is quite near to the Medical Research Council's Toxicological Research Unit at Carshalton.

Oral Answers to Questions — ATOMIC ENERGY

Imperial College (Low-Power Nuclear Reactor)

Mr. Wainwright: asked the Minister of Education, as representing the Minister for Science, if he has now reached a decision with regard to the application from London University Imperial College of Science and Technology for permission to build a low-power nuclear reactor.

Sir D. Eccles: This, and a number of similar applications from universities, are under consideration by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, which is advised on the technical merits of these applications by the National Institute for Research in Nuclear Science. These applications involve for each reactor a capital expenditure of up to £250,000, plus annual maintenance costs, and raise considerable issues both of finance and of principle. They must also be assessed in relation to other requests in all fields of science for research grants to universities. A decision will be announced as soon as possible.

Mr. Wainwright: Is the Minister aware that, according to a statement in The Times on 19th October this year, this application has been in his hands for at least two years? Does he not think that the universities ought to have attached to them low-power nuclear reactors, in view of the fact that in Western Germany and in France—not to mention the U.S.S.R. or the U.S.A.—lowpower reactors are attached to universities? Does he realise that if we want to train nuclear engineers and reactor physicists—[HON. MEMBERS: "Speech."]—just a moment—it is essential that we should have the best form of education for these engineers and scientists? I beg the Minister to give attention to this matter as soon as possible.

Sir D. Eccles: My noble Friend agrees that the provision of some reactors of this kind is most important, but as there have been a good number of applications it is clearly essential to determine where the reactors should be placed.

Oral Answers to Questions — TANGANYIKA

Secondary Education

Mr. Rankin: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies, in view of the early attainment of self-government by Tanganyika, what steps he proposes taking to increase the output of students who have completed their full secondary school course in order to enable more Africans to enter the Tanganyikan Civil Service.

The Secretary of State for the Colonies (Mr. Iain Macleod): The expansion of secondary education is being given a high priority by the Tanganyika Government who, on present plans, aim at increasing the number of African candidates for school certificate from 300 to over 2,000 and candidates for higher school certificate from 90 to at least 300, over the next three years. An increase in the supply of teachers to keep pace with this programme is also planned. Her Majesty's Government have already approved a grant of over £250,000 for secondary school expansion from moneys available under the Colonial Development and Welfare Acts.

Mr. Rankin: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for those figures and for his Answer, but does he agree that a fully Africanised Civil Service is essential to the well-being of Tanganyika? Is he aware that at the moment there are 3,400 officers in the Civil Service of whom a mere 380 are Africans, and that last year only 324 took the school certificate while 762 vacancies awaited? Does he realise that these disgraceful figures are due to the fact that successive Tory Governments have failed to recognise—[HON. MEMBERS: "Speech.]—the speed of political change in Africa and that, because of that fact, we are now faced with this problem of what special steps—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member's supplementary question is out of order; it is all argument. Mrs. Castle.

Mr. Rankin: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Surely it is within order for me now to ask what special steps the Minister is taking to meet this problem.

Mr. Speaker: No. I ruled the hon. Member's supplementary question out of order. Mrs. Castle.

Oral Answers to Questions — HONG KONG

Women Civil Servants (Equal Pay)

Mrs. Castle: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies (1) why it is not proposed to extend the principle of equal pay, recently introduced for certain women medical officers in Hong Kong, to women teachers and other women civil servants in the employment of the Hong Kong Government;
(2) how many women are employed in the Government service in Hong Kong; and how many are receiving equal pay.

Mr. Iain Macleod: On 1st January, 1960, 6,696 women were employed in the Government service. Twelve who are medical officers are receiving "equal pay".
The policy of the Hong Kong Government is based on the conclusions and recommendations of last year's Salaries Commission, which narrowed the gap between men's and women's salaries.

Mrs. Castle: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Salaries Commission was composed exclusively of men and that women are getting tired of having this stale, old trick foisted on them of appointing an all-male committee in order to establish that there is no case for giving women equal pay with men? Is he also aware that the women education officers of Hong Kong, who have equal professional qualifications with women medical officers, bitterly resent this discrimination? Will he intervene to get this equality for women in Hong Kong?

Mr. Macleod: I cannot advise the Governor to disregard the report of the Salaries Commission to Which I have referred. In Hong Kong unequal pay is in fact normal inside and outside the Government Service. In this and all

countries it has been a long and slow progress towards equal pay, but I am sure that progress will continue in the professional departments in particular in Hong Kong.

Mr. C. Pannell: Is the Minister aware that in the British Civil Service we shall have reached this year equal pay in the public service after a transitional period of seven years? Is he also aware that the Leader of the House is to be the guest of honour at at least one occasion to celebrate this, and why is the right hon. Gentleman, representing the Colonies, going to let down his right hon. Friend?

Mr. Macleod: If I am invited to attend a similar dinner, I shall see if I can fit it into my engagements.

Oral Answers to Questions — NYASALAND

Mr. D. Chisiza (Books)

Mr. Callaghan: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies how long the books, "Balance of Payments, Rhodesia and Nyasaland", and "Economic Development in Africa", addressed to Mr. Dunduza Chisiza when in detention, were held by the Returned Letter Branch of the Post Office in Nyasaland; and why no attempt was made to deliver them before 7th November or to return them to the senders.

Mr. Iain Macleod: I am sure that the delay will be regretted, but the books referred to have now been discovered and forwarded to Mr. Chisiza and I am not in a position to comment further on the organisation of the postal services.

Mr. Callaghan: Does the Colonial Secretary really regard that as an adequate explanation, considering that the man to whom they were addressed has been regarded by the authorities as the second most dangerous man in Nyasaland? Did they not know that he was in Gwelo prison? Why did it take four months after I raised this matter for me to be informed that it had been established that there were no such books, when a fortnight later another letter came from the Secretary of State saying that they had been found?

Mr. Macleod: I do not think there is any need to read any political significance into this matter. If it be true,


and I am sure that it is on my information, that these books were wrongly addressed—not to a Nyasaland address at all but to Bulawayo—it is not surprising that this took some considerable time.

Mr. Callaghan: I am saying that either the right hon. Gentleman's administration or someone else's is grossly inefficient. Mr. Chisiza was the second best known name in Nyasaland. Is it not well known that he was arrested and sent to Gwelo gaol? Can the Colonial Secretary assure me that there was no attempt to keep these books from him whilst he was in prison?

Mr. Macleod: As far as I know, I can on the last point give a complete assurance, but in fact postal matters, as the hon. Gentleman very well knows, are for the Federal authorities.

Oral Answers to Questions — WEST INDIES

Migrants to United Kingdom

Mr. N. Pannell: asked the Secretary of State for the Colonies what success has attended his efforts to induce the West Indian Governments to co-operate with him to reduce the flow of migrants to this country.

Mr. Iain Macleod: The West Indian Governments in general show an understanding of the problems involved in migration to this country and a readiness to co-operate with Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom in dealing with them. I am satisfied that they are fully alive to the need for impressing upon potential emigrants the problems involved in migration to this country.

Mr. Pannell: Is my right hon. Friend aware that since he gave an assurance in this House on 21st July that the West Indian Governments would co-operate in this matter the rate of inflow of immigrants has greatly increased, and that during the first ten months of this year there were 43,450 immigrants from the West Indies as compared with 16,400 for the whole of last year? This has been a matter of concern for several months, and will my right hon. Friend consult with his Cabinet colleagues with a view to doing something effective instead of

watching the situation carefully month by month while it is steadily deteriorating?

Mr. Macleod: I can assure my hon. Friend that there is on this matter particularly co-ordination by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary—in view of his responsibility, very close consultation indeed. It is true that the figures are very large and must cause anxiety this year. I believe that administrative methods will not really serve in this matter and that the choice must be in trying to hold the balance between administrative methods and legislation, but I am sure that my hon. Friend will recognise what an immense breach in our tradition legislation would mean.

Sir J. Duncan: Will my right hon. Friend remember that there are far more hon. Members worried about this matter than would appear from Questions on the Order Paper?

Mr. Macleod: I know that, and I hope that the answer I have given to the supplementary question shows that Her Majesty's Government are worried about it, too.

Mr. Dugdale: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that there are a very large number of immigrants from Ireland coming to this country? If representations are to be made, will they also be made to Ireland?

Mr. Macleod: The study that Her Majesty's Government undertake has no relationship whatever to colour or to different countries within the Common-wealth. It covers all the problems of both immigration and migration from all countries in the Commonwealth on the same basis.

INDIA (LOW-PRICED TEXT BOOKS)

Mr. Ginsburg: asked the Prime Minister what representations he has received from Mr. Nehru about the low-priced textbooks to be supplied to India under the Government's scheme.

The Prime Minister (Mr. Harold Macmillan): None, Sir.

Mr. Ginsburg: While welcoming that assurance, may I ask whether the Prime


Minister is aware that only one economic textbook has been provided for India under that scheme, namely, Marshall's "Principles of Economics," first published in 1890? Will the Prime Minister consult the publishers; they are a firm very well known to him? Have they not something a little more up to date in stock? Will he suggest to them Keynes' "Theory of Employment" or perhaps "The Middle Way", by a promising prewar economist?

The Prime Minister: I am informed that at all stages there has been close consultation with the Indian authorities. The hon. Member's Question, however, allows me to say that for obvious reasons I have myself taken no part in any Ministerial discussions of this matter, and I should be greatly obliged if Questions could be addressed either to the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster or to the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations.

QUESTIONS TO MINISTERS

Mr. Shinwell: May I raise a point, Mr. Speaker, which I have raised on previous occasions? There are sixteen Questions on the Order Paper down to the Prime Minister. Surely after our experience over several months, familiar to all hon. Members, we desire some change to be made immediately to enable the Prime Minister to answer Questions. May I ask you, Mr. Speaker, in the interests of hon. Members, whether it is possible to address a representation to the Prime Minister that he should proceed to answer Questions, on the days appointed for his Questions, at 3.15 p.m.?

Mr. Speaker: I will take what the right hon. Member has said to me as a representation so addressed and in the presence of the Prime Minister.

Mr. Rankin: On a point of order. Might I seek your guidance, Mr. Speaker, in view of the fact that it appears to me that you made a somewhat unusual Ruling on my supplementary question to Question No. 35? If I heard you aright, you said that there was some argument in the supplementary question, which I was seeking to put over despite the loud mouths on the other side. How can one otherwise frame a supplementary

question, which must to some extent be contesting the Answer which the Minister has just given, or it is of no use? We cannot swallow everything which Ministers tell us. We have discovered that time and time again. If the idea of incorporating some measure of argument or disagreement is to be barred from supplementary questions, what the hell is the use of putting them?

Hon. Members: Oh.

Mr. Speaker: The House knows, and the hon. Member knows, that I strive to help the House to get along with Questions; it is the wish of the House that I should do so. I confess that through my being too indulgent, sometimes, the rules about questions are not sufficiently rigidly enforced by the Chair. I understand the Ruling to be that, though one may use argument in debate, questions importing argument are out of order. I will check my words by reference to the authorities and I will unhesitatingly apologise to the hon. Gentleman and to the House if, when I read the terms of the question which the hon. Member asked, I think that my Ruling was wrong. In that event, I will say so. It is very difficult to be quite sure. I thought that it was a question which was all argument and nothing else.

Mr. Bellenger: With reference to the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell), I do not know whether it is within your recollection, Mr. Speaker, but before the war the House seemed quite often to get through all the Questions on the Order Paper—as many as are on the Order Paper today. With due respect to you, Mr. Speaker, may I suggest that perhaps you can help to get Questions over in ways which are well known to you as the occupant of the Chair? If that is not to be done, then it is a farce putting Questions down to the Prime Minister and finding that only one of them is answered.

Mr. Paget: I do not know whether you are aware, Mr. Speaker, that Question No. 45, in my name, has been down to the Prime Minister every day on which he has answered Questions since we reassembled after the summer holiday and that it has not yet been reached. The position at the moment is that the only Questions which the Prime Minister ever reaches are those which have been


put down several weeks in advance, so that he never answers a topical Question.

Mr. Speaker: This is one of the days when, without seeking to be vaunting, I do not accept very well that the Chair was to blame. I did my best to propel the House on all the time.

Colonel Beamish: Is there not a close connection between the point of order raised by the right hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell) and the point raised by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Rankin)? Is it not within the recollection of all of us that a few years ago we regularly reached Question No. 60 or even No. 65? Is it not there-for very much in the hands of the House itself if we want to get beyond Question No. 40?

Mr. Speaker: I constantly appeal to the House for its assistance. I need it.

Mr. Turton: I hope that you, Mr. Speaker, will bear in mind that the Select Committee on Procedure made a direct recommendation as mentioned by the right hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Shinwell). I think that we have had a sufficient period of experiment now to show that the present method is not working. We all want to hear my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister answer Questions, and we are being denied that opportunity day by day. I think that the time is coming when, through the usual channels, we might reconsider this experiment and adopt that which the Select Committee on Procedure actually recommended.

Sir T. Moore: This subject is in all our minds, although we may not all have asked questions about it. We all realise that the Prime Minister deals with a wider series of subjects than any other Minister in the House. Every Question which is put to him, therefore, is of intense importance, possibly, not only to all of us here but to many outside. May I reinforce the suggestion made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Mr. Turton), following the recommendation by the Select Committee, that we automatically turn to the Prime Minister's Questions at 3.15 p.m. without any interference by points of order or anything else?

Mr. Gaitskell: While it is obviously desirable that we should try to get through more Questions in total than we have been doing recently, are you aware, Mr. Speaker, that not only was the proposal that the Prime Minister should answer Questions at 3.15 p.m. made by the Select Committee but that it has been repeatedly pressed from these benches upon the Government? I ask the Leader of the House to have another look at this matter. No reasonable explanation has ever been given as to why the Prime Minister should not answer Questions at 3.15 p.m.

Mr. Rankin: Further to my point of order. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Is it not the case that on Monday of this week we reached Question No. 58? [HON. MEMBERS: "The hon. Member was not here."] I was here and I put two supplementary questions. The reason for this progress was that most of the Tories were absent on Monday. They are here today.

Mr. Blackburn: In the debate on the Select Committee's Report I moved an Amendment that the Prime Minister should answer Questions at 3.15 p.m. but I did not press it to a Division on an assurance from the Leader of the House that we would first try the experiment of the Prime Minister answering Questions at No. 40. The experiment has gone on long enough and it is quite obvious that for the Prime Minister to start answering Questions at No. 40 is not satisfactory to the House. I think that it would be a good idea to adopt the 3.15 p.m. procedure.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I hope that enough views have been expressed to make the feelings of the House plain.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Gaitskell: May I ask the Leader of the House to state the business for next week?

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. R. A. Butler): Yes, Sir. The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY, 5TH DECEMBER—Second Reading of the Betting Levy Bill.
Committee and remaining stages of the Electricity (Amendment) Bill.
Committee stage of the Civil Supplementary Estimates for the National Health Service, England and Wales and for Scotland.
TUESDAY, 6TH DECEMBER—Supply [1st Allotted Day]:
Motion to move Mr. Speaker out of the Chair, when a debate will arise on an Opposition Amendment relating to the Motor Car Industry.
WEDNESDAY, 7TH DECEMBER—Second Reading of the Covent Garden Market Bill and Committee stage of the necessary Money Resolution.
THURSDAY, 8TH DECEMBER—Consideration of the Local Government General Grant Orders and Transitional Adjustments Regulations for England and Wales, and of the Local Government General Grant (Scotland) Order.
FRIDAY, 9TH DECEMBER—Consideration of Private Members' Bills.
MONDAY, 12TH DECEMBER—The proposed business will be consideration of private Members' Motions until seven o'clock.
The Government business to be taken after seven o'clock will be announced later.
It may be convenient for me to inform the House that it is proposed to adjourn for the Christmas Recess during the week of Monday, 19th December.
I will announce the definite date as soon as possible, but this will depend upon the progress of necessary business.

Mr. Gaitskell: Will the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that, as I requested last week, there will be a defence debate before the N.A.T.O. Conference begins?

Mr. Butler: Yes, Sir.

Mr. Shinwell: Will the right hon. Gentleman give us an approximate date for the debate on General Norstad's submission?

Mr. Butler: The debate asked for, prior to the N.A.T.O. meeting, will take place in the week after that which I have just mentioned.

Miss Bacon: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this morning Standing Committee B met to consider the Criminal Justice Bill and that that Committee will meet again on Tuesday and Thursday of next week? Does he realise how this Committee will be placed by virtue of the fact that neither he, as Home Secretary, nor his right hon. Friend the Minister of State at the Home Office is a member of that Standing Committee? Since the right hon. Gentleman finds time in the morning, as I understand he did this morning, to go to the Tory Party Central Office and to carry out his duties as Chairman of the Tory Party, cannot he now find the time to pilot his own Home Office Bills through the Standing Committee?

Mr. Butler: On the Standing Committee there are my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General and my hon. and learned Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department. I think that the Government are very well represented on that Standing Committee, and I am very well satisfied that they are able to carry out their duties. The greater part of my duties this morning were taken up in attending a Cabinet meeting, and that, I think, is my primary duty.

Mr. Gaitskell: Since this is a very important Bill, and although we all realise that the right hon. Gentleman carries a very heavy burden, and has had to introduce a number of Bills, will he not reconsider attending the Committee on the Criminal Justice Bill which, after all, deals with a subject to which we all know that he himself attaches immense importance?

Mr. Butler: I have given this matter very careful consideration. I quite understand the motives which inspire the questions which have been put to me on this occasion. I am sorry that I have not been able to serve as a member of the Standing Committee, but I am well satisfied that my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General and my hon. and learned Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State are very suitable representatives for the Government.

Mr. Lipton: Will the Leader of the House find time for a Motion on National Health Service charges for


drugs, signed by more than 100 of his hon. Friends—
[That this House is of the opinion that private patients should be enabled to obtain their medicines and drugs on the same terms and conditions as National Health Service patients; and urges Her Majesty's Government to introduce the necessary legislation without further delay]—
to which an Amendment has been tabled by nearly 100 of my hon. Friends—
[in line 1, leave out from "that" to end and add "Her Majesty's Government should resist all pressures to enable private patients to receive medicines and drugs free of charge as this would place an increased burden on the taxpayer, would encourage a first and second class service in general practice and adversely affect the incomes of general practitioners wholly or mainly within the National Health Service and would be contrary to the principles on which that Service is based".]
May we not have a friendly discussion on that important matter before the Christmas Recess, in which we should all very much like to hear what the Minister of Health has to say?

Mr. Butler: I cannot undertake that there will be time for that before the Christmas Recess.

Mr. Marsh: Will the right hon. Gentleman try to find time soon after the Christmas Recess for a general debate on the all-important topic of industrial relations in Britain, so that we may discuss this subject objectively rather than, as is usually the case, against the background of a serious dispute?

Mr. Butler: I realise the importance of the subject and I am quite ready to have discussions on it, but it will be very difficult to find time.

Mr. Jay: Will the Government next week, or earlier, make a further statement about the Ford Motor Company, in view of the report that the American Government may not give permission for this transaction? When the Government were in such a hurry to give their own permission, did they first find out whether the American Government would give theirs?

Mr. Butler: I cannot undertake to be sure, from the information in my possession, whether the latter part of the right hon. Gentleman's supplementary question is correct. All I will say is that I will discuss it with my right hon. Friends.

Mr. Stonehouse: In view of the importance of the subject, and the interest in it indicated at Question Time, will the Leader of the House say whether time is to be given to debate the Report of the Morse Economic Survey Mission?

Mr. Butler: I can only undertake to consider that.

Mr. C. Royle: Returning to the subject of the Criminal Justice Bill, can the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that his right hon. and learned Friend and his hon. and learned Friend will have power to accept Amendments in that Standing Committee; or does he expect the Bill to come back to the Floor of the House in the same state as that in which it went to the Standing Committee?

Mr. Butler: I am perfectly satisfied that my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General and my hon. and learned Friend the Under-Secretary of State have the power to take an elastic view of Amendments put down in that Standing Committee, and I do not doubt that, on Report, the Bill will come back greatly improved.

Mr. Shinwell: I want to return to the matter I raised before the Leader of the House announced the business for next week. Will he arrange the business next week in such a fashion as will enable the Prime Minister to answer Oral Questions at 3.15 p.m.?

Mr. Butler: My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister was present during the interchanges that took place just before the business statement, and I will undertake, not only on my own behalf but on behalf of my right hon. Friend, to pay attention to what has been said in the House, and to give careful consideration to this matter.

Mr. Pavitt: Will the right hon. Gentleman say whether the House will ever have an opportunity to discuss the Report of the Royal Commission on Doctors' and Dentists' Remuneration?


Next week, we shall be discussing the Supplementary Estimate relating to that Report. Is it not time that the Government took the House into their confidence? We should be able to discuss such important matters rather than that the Government should take decisions without reference to the House at all.

BILL PRESENTED

NURSES (AMENDMENT)

Bill to amend the law relating to nurses for the sick, presented by Dame Irene Ward, supported by Lord Balniel, Miss Harvie Anderson, Miss Herbison, Mr. Parker, Dr. Summerskill, and Miss Joan Vickers; read the First time; to be read a Second time upon Friday, 9th December, and to be printed. [Bill 40.]

NATIONAL ASSISTANCE

3.48 p.m.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance (Miss Patricia Hornsby-Smith): I beg to move,
That the National Assistance (Determination of Need) Amendment Regulations, 1960, a draft of which was laid before this House on 2nd November, be approved.
These Regulations mark a further step in the improvement of standards of those drawing grants from the National Assistance Board. The Board's proposals take into account the Government's proposals for improving National Insurance benefits, and taken in conjunction with the 1959 increases, when no comparable National Insurance increases were made, they represent slightly larger increases than those operative in National Insurance over the same period.
Those basic rates do not, however, take into account the rent allowances for householder applicants, which bring National Assistance benefits substantially above National Insurance, nor do they take account of certain discretionary allowances made by the Board. A schedule of the new basic rates is set out in the Board's Explanatory Memorandum, Command 1198.
When National Assistance and National Insurance rates were last increased together in 1958 the basic pension, sickness and unemployment rate was 50s. single 80s. married, against National Assistance of 45s. single and 76s. double. In the interim between then and now National Assistance recipients received a 5s. single and 9s. married increase in advance of any National Insurance improvement. The National Assistance rates now proposed are 53s. 6d. and 90s. which makes an increase of 8s. 6d. and 14s. since 1958, compared with 7s. 6d. and 12s. 6d. on National Insurance. Over the years since 1948 the rate for the single householder has increased by 123 per cent. and for the married couple by 125 par cent.
These increases will come into force at the same time as those for National Insurance and war pensions benefits. The Board take the view, and I think that The House will agree, that when increases are applicable in both National Insurance and National Assistance it is wholly


desirable that they should operate at the same time, to avoid the misunderstandings and disappointments Which are inevitable if either one precedes the other. If National Assistance increases precede National Insurance their rates go up temporarily, only to be withdrawn a few weeks later for those drawing National Insurance. Books which are drawn for varying periods of up to a year would have to be altered twice in a few weeks, with all the frustration and annoyance to recipients involved.
As a result of this combined operation, all recipients of National Insurance benefits and or National Assistance Board grants will receive a net increase. The National Insurance benefit of those drawing National Insurance pensions or benefits and a National Assistance supplement will go up, but their National Assistance benefit will be adjusted. For those drawing National Assistance only their grant from the Board will be increased. In round figures, about 500,000 will draw higher National Assistance benefits and 1,300,000 will have a net increase of income resulting from the combination of higher National Insurance benefits and National Assistance changes.
For the past two years prices have remained relatively steady and thus the proposed increases represent a real rise in standards. Hon. Members opposite frequently complain that the retail price index is not truly applicable to the expenses and purchases of people on National Assistance—but even allowing a margin of disparity for that, the fact remains that whilst the index of retail prices has gone up 58 per cent. since 1948, National Assistance rates have gone up more than 120 per cent. The comparison is so striking that it is abundantly clear that these and the former increases have both been real increases in value. The proposed new rates represent increases of 19 per cent. single, and 18 per cent. married, over the 1958 rates, since when the index of retail prices has risen 3 per cent.
The House may be interested in the classifications of persons drawing National Assistance. In round figures, as at September, 1960, about 1,300,000 were old people; 260,000 were sick people; 130,000 were widows, or other women, mostly separated wives with

children; 112,000 were unemployed; and a further 18,000 of varying categories made up the remainder.
As stated in the Board's Explanatory Memorandum, the estimated cost of the proposed increases in assistance rates, considered on their own, is £18½ million, but there will be a contra saving in relation to those also drawing National Insurance benefits. To get the question of cost in proper perspective, one must not overlook the cost of the improvements in assistance made last year. The estimate of expenditure on assistance in the current financial year, £168 million, exceeds the original estimate for 1959–60 of £125 million by £43 million, mainly, though not only, for this reason.
I would like to say a word about the rent allowance, which is all too frequently forgotten when the standard rates, whether of pension or National Assistance are discussed. I have personally found it one of the most cogent arguments in persuading retirement pensioners of their right to go to the National Assistance Board if they have no means other than their pension and are householders. At the end of 1959 the average rent paid by householder recipients of assistance was 19s. 7d. a week, and 99 per cent. of all householders receiving National Assistance had a full rent allowance. This is a very important addition which should be borne in mind when considering National Assistance levels.
A single householder living alone and with a rent of this order, say 20s., will have his income brought up to at least £3 13s. 6d. a week, and a married couple with a similar rent will have theirs brought up to at least £5 10s. a week. I emphasise "at least", because the figures would, of course, be higher if the applicant had a higher rent, or if he had special needs provided for under the Board's discretionary powers, or if he had income of which part was left out of account under the disregards which were increased last year.
It is worth recording an example of how this works. A pensioner couple living alone with a 20s. rent and part-time earnings of 50s. a week would have a total income of at least £7 10s. a week, as a proportion of earnings are disregarded. For families on National Assistance the amounts of total income


would, of course, be higher than for single persons and childless couples. The proposed new scale rates for a man and wife with three young children total £7 11s. With a rent of 20s. such a family would normally have a total income of £8 11s. a week—

Mr. Douglas Marshall: My right hon. Friend has mentioned disregards. Will she quote those disregards, as the information would be helpful in that context?

Miss Hornsby-Smith: There are disregards of up to £375 in respect of war savings, and up to £125 other savings. There is then a sliding scale of deductions up to a total of £600. The first 30s. of earnings are disregarded, and there is then, again, a sliding scale.
In last week's debate, and again in Questions, there has been considerable comment in the House about the increase in the price of coal. That recently-announced increase in the basic price of coal works out at 6d. a cwt. and is well covered in the new increases. The scale rates are assessed to include all normal requirements, including fuel.
I am sure that the House will agree that it is better to have a standard allowance throughout the year than to weight it in winter, and then have all the disappointments and frustrations when the rate is reduced at other times of the year when fuel may not be required to the same extent. Again, of course, there are discretionary allowances which the Board has power to grant, and these are paid to very many retired pensioners
Now, a word about those who are entitled to a supplementary grant from the N.A.B. but for reasons of pride or prejudice refuse to apply. No householder who is trying to maintain himself exclusively on the basic retirement pension need do so, nor should refrain from applying to the Board. At a time when retirement pensioners represent a complete cross section of the community from the wealthy farmer or the company director to the humblest widow or the lowest paid worker, there are obviously some who need additional help and others who, even retired, are better off than many people still at work.
Too many members, on both sides of the House, while throwing in a tribute to the Board, accentuate words like "stigma" and "charity", which in this context can only strengthen those reluctant to apply in their belief that there is something undignified and even wrong in doing so. Many members have tried to propose a third tier of aid to pensioners in the mistaken belief that it would eliminate the test of need. That is moonshine. No responsible Government, of whatever party, could accept a policy whereby the taxpayer's money was handed out regardless of means or need; and however one goes about finding out, however one dresses it up, it is, and will remain, a test of need.
It is a pity that the fine old Christian word "charity" has now become a term of abuse. Charity to those in need is one of the Christian virtues. If an ex-Service man gets a grant from one of the many great Service organisations, he does not scorn it as charity. If a sick person is helped by the Red Cross or St. John, it is welcomed, and not scorned as charity.
When it comes to State provision, millions of people in need of medical treatment draw it, from the National Health Service, but no one calls it charity because the taxpayer finds most of the money. The National Assistance Board is equally a State service financed by the Treasury to provide for those most in need. Its chairman, for many years a distinguished Member of this House, is vigilant in seeing that everything possible is done to make application easy for those eligible for grants. It needs to be repeated that elderly applicants do not have to go to the Board. The Board's officers will call on them. Its staff made 6 million calls in 1959 alone.
Special efforts have been made to bring the right to apply to the Board to the attention of those who may be eligible. There is a prominent note in the retirement pension book. The posters which appear in post offices and other establishments have been more effectively redesigned and reworded. A new booklet "Help for those in Need" has been produced for the information of doctors, clergymen and social workers and the like, and has been widely distributed by the Board's local managers. Every Member of this House has had a copy from the Chairman of


the Board. Talks are given to old people's clubs and other local organisations. The words "National Assistance" have been removed from the order books and the new books refer to a "Supplement to pension or other weekly grant". So that everything possible is being done to encourage people and to make it as easy as possible, without any hurt to their pride, for them to apply to the Board.
Hon. Members can do—and, I am sure, they do—much to persuade old people that there is no loss of pride in accepting a service which Parliament and the State has provided for the express purpose of helping those most in need. Often, the application is a hurdle which hon. Members can often jump for the applicant if they merely say, "If I ask the Assistance Board to call, will you see their officer?" I did this myself recently in a constituency case and the old coup le in question received a supplement of over 30s. a week. They subsequently wrote to me:
… if only we had known how easy it was, and how nice the Board's people are, we could have spared ourselves a great deal of worry a long time ago.
The inquiries made today bear no comparison with the stringent regulations of the old Poor Law system. Those with modest savings, or their own house, may still apply. The disregards were increased by the present Government in 1959. As I have already told my hon. Friend the Member for Bodmin (Mr. Marshall), a married couple can have £375 in war savings and, if they have no more than £125 otherwise, can have it disregarded altogether. There is a sliding scale of deductions up to a savings limit of £600.
In commending the Regulations to the House, I am sure that it would be the wish of hon. Members, on both sides, to place on record our appreciation of the great humanitarian work done by the National Assistance Board. Our thanks are due to its Chairman, Sir Geoffrey Hutchinson, the members of the Board and its staff throughout the country for the sympathy and tact with which they deal with an immense number of applications. They bring additional aid and comfort to the old, the sick, the unemployed and the deserted. They have a high sense of the duties imposed upon them by Parliament and honourably and sympathetically discharge them.
In the course of their work, they have to deal with all kinds of people. The vast majority are kindly, reasonable and honourable citizens. Occasionally, the Board's officers must cope with the aggressive, the demanding and, alas, sometimes the plainly dishonest. Whatever the case, they uphold the great tradition of high public service imposed upon them by this House and they interpret honestly and with humanity the nation's desire to help those people who are most of all in need. In that spirit, I commend the regulations to the House.

4.5 p.m.

Mr. Douglas Houghton: The right hon. Lady has moved the Regulations in a businesslike and agreeable way. The House is indebted to her for having given us a broad canvas of the area of social purposes that the Regulations cover. The right hon. Lady is more attractive in stating a case than in replying to one. I do not know how long the debate may continue, or what may happen in the course of it, but I am sure that we are beginning the debate on a very pleasant note.
Last week, the Minister told the Committee on the National Insurance Bill the great advantage of a Bill as compared with Regulations. As we know, regulations are not subject to amendment and the rules of order in discussing them are necessarily limited. The right hon. Gentleman was drawing on those facts to suggest how much better it was to have a Bill; he told us that it could be amended. Last week's Bill, however, was not amended in any respect. We on this side, therefore, really have not noticed the difference between the Bill and the Regulations. In this debate we must, however, beware about restrictions on the scope of our discussion.
It may be permissible for me to suggest that we should consider the Regulations in the background of the Report of the National Assistance Board, because it is from that Report that we see the sum and substance of what the Regulations mean and who will get the benefit of them. I always find a Report of the National Assistance Board a most readable and informative document. I should like to join with the right hon. Lady in paying tribute to the National Assistance Board and, in particular, to its


Chairman. The occasion for doing this may not recur at frequent intervals, so that this opportunity should not be lost of paying our tribute to the wise and sympathetic administration of the National Assistance Board under its Chairman, Sir Geoffrey Hutchinson, at one time a well-respected Member of this House.
The National Assistance Board is a triumph of wise and sympathetic administration. It belies the jeers which are frequently thrown at bureaucracy and at that hypothetical, if not mythical, gentleman from Whitehall who is always supposed to know best. It is also a refutation of the Frenchman who said that precedent is to the civil servant as brains are to man. One thing about the National Assistance Board is that its administration is flexible and it uses freely and fully its discretionary powers. Although equally deserving, how envious the Inland Revenue Department must be of the National Assistance Board and its repute for a humanitarian approach to the problems and needs of the people. All those who pay tribute to the National Assistance Board should have a thought for those who collect the money.
The right hon. Lady touched our imagination when she described the range and the composition of the persons receiving the benefits covered by the Regulations. We are discussing Regulations which bring improved conditions to 1¾ million people. What will arouse our compassion is that they are the l¾ million poorest people. They are those who have few, if any, other resources and who have to seek this assistance to enable them to keep going.
I will deal later with the right hon. Lady's comments about going to the National Assistance Board and the persuasion which she used in that connection, which I fully endorse, but which must be looked at, however, in another context. The figures given by the right hon. Lady showed that by far the largest proportion of those who receive National Assistance are retirement pensioners. That is a significant fact. In numbers, over half of those who receive National Assistance are retirement pensioners. In expenditure, retirement pensioners account for one-third of the total.
I hope that I am not striking a discordant note in saying that that reflects

the failure of the National Insurance Scheme to live up to the expectations of its founders that the benefits under National Insurance would provide an adequate subsistence without recourse to National Assistance. The fact that nearly 70 per cent. of all National Assistance beneficiaries are in receipt of National Insurance benefits is further proof of what I have just said.
Among them are 58,000 widows for whom National Insurance benefits are not enough. That is, perhaps, more distressing than some of the other facts about the relationship between National Insurance and National Assistance. There is, as the right hon. Lady pointed out, another half a million people who are not receiving National Insurance benefits. The right hon. Lady bracketed them together, but it is of interest to note, in passing, that 77,000 separated wives have to go to the National Assistance Board as well as 24,000 mothers of illegitimate children and some thousands of divorced wives. The total of emotional and human misery in those figures must be very large.
The right hon. Lady did not, however, mention another important section of those who receive National Assistance benefits and about whose level of benefits I will have something to say later. I refer to our 55,000 blind people and the 17,000 sufferers from tuberculosis who are undergoing treatment and who have, throughout, received a preferential rate of benefit, but which, as I hope to demonstrate, is in need of adustment under these Regulations.
The question may be asked whether National Assistance is of growing importance in our system of social security or whether it is losing its primary position in the broad canvas of social provision. I admit that it is scarcely possible that all National Insurance benefits should be fully adequate, but, if they were very much more adequate than they are, the numbers on National Assistance would fall greatly. If all National Insurance beneficiaries were placed beyond the need of National Assistance, the Board's care would extend to fewer than 600,000 people.
I think that we should get straight the problem of people going to the National Assistance Board. The British people


are proud and independent, and I am not sure that we want to try to break that down unduly because it is one of the characteristics of our race. One of the fundamental reasons for endeavouring to provide National Insurance benefits as of right and adequate to need was that we realised that the British people do not like going to assistance boards, whether they are public assistance committees, unemployment assistance boards or national assistance boards. That is something we cannot get rid of. If the people of Britain were more ready than they are to avail themselves of this kind of help, we should not be the people we are. That is something of which we should be proud.
Nevertheless, I agree with the right hon. Lady that we do not want people to have false or excessive pride in availing themselves of what Parliament has provided. I do not think that we should use our endeavours to encourage people to go to the National Assistance Board as an excuse for not providing more benefits as of right under the National Insurance Scheme. I hope and believe that I have never said that to go to the National Assistance Board is a stigma. Suggestions made at different times about the numbers who do not go, but who should go and would get benefit if they went, are exaggerated. We all meet in our constituencies people who are very near to National Assistance level and we are able to judge for ourselves whether we know many people of our own experience who strongly resist going to the National Assistance Board when it is clear that by doing so they would benefit.
However, in my experience over a long period, particularly concerning people over 70, the non-contributory pensioner, I have found that, if people are assured unofficially that if they go to the National Assistance Board they will not be rebuffed but will be given help, they go with greater willingness and confidence. That should be borne in mind in dealing with people who come to us and ask, "Do you think that I could get anything from the National Assistance Board?" It may sometimes help to make an unofficial inquiry or to express one's own judgment to pave the way to a consideration of the case of the Board.
There is one small problem I wish to mention, in passing, which will arise from the introduction of the new scales alongside

the improved benefits under the National Insurance Scheme. A number of people on National Assistance now may not be on National Assistance after April, when the higher benefits under the National Insurance Scheme may extinguish their National Assistance allowance. Those people will be placed outside the benefit of refund of prescription charges. Can anything be done transitionally to meet that situation? Some people may be literally no better off when they pass out of the range of National Assistance and receive their higher National Insurance benefits and the additional charge for prescription may be unduly heavy. I am sure that it would be very welcome to those concerned if something could be done in this matter.
How many people will go off National Assistance I cannot estimate. The 140,000 National Insurance beneficiaries were receiving allowances of less than 10s. a week, according to the Report of the National Assistance Board for 1959, and 217,000 National Insurance beneficiaries were receiving National Assistance allowances of between 10s. 6d. and 15s. Clearly, there will be a number of persons whose National Assistance will be extinguished because it will be overtaken by the higher National Insurance benefits, but the overall picture of these Regulations is one in which National Assistance continues to play a large part in our system of social security—a larger part than many people expected and a larger part than we on these benches think it should, although it is plain that National Assistance must continue to play an important part until benefits as of right render it unnecessary over a much wider front of National Insurance beneficiaries.
I do not know whether, during the debate, we shall hear, or whether it will be permissible to hear, views from the benches opposite on the important question whether National Assistance or National Insurance should be the primary feature of social security. In the Observer last Sunday it was suggested that, when I posed the question to the House on the Third Reading of the National Insurance Bill, I had got it all wrong from a Conservative point of view and that there was strong feeling from the benches opposite not only that


National Assistance should be continued, but that its benefits could be greatly increased if we stopped spreading money unnecessarily over the much broader front of National Insurance benefits. I will leave that point in case I go beyond the rules of order. I sum it up by saying that we shall not escape the rôle of National Assistance in present circumstances.
What do the Regulations do? They propose to increase the scale allowance for married couples by 5s. and for single people by 3s. 6d. a week, in both cases in addition to the rent allowance which applies to the National Assistance scale all the time. One of the well-kept secrets of political affairs and Departmental administration is what goes on between the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance and the Chairman of the National Assistance Board. I do not know who speaks first, or whether they agree on what they should say when the Chairman of tthe Board writes his letter to the Minister.
The right hon. Lady has not said one word about how the Board arrived at the figures of 5s. and 3s. 6d. Reasonably astute hon. Members—they are in large number, I may add—were able to deduce from the figures of National Insurance benefits that the Minister had asked his Department to work out what benefits could be provided if he were to take up the difference between the proposed new flat-rate contributions under the 1959 Act and the existing contributions. No such calculation is possible, however, in this connection and no clue about how the figures have been arrived at is available.
The right hon. Lady referred to the retail price index. I concede at once that that is a very important factor, but it is of less importance today than it was, because we are looking at the maintenance of reasonable standards of living which are not based wholly on the retail price index. The right hon. Lady, taking her cue from the Minister, told the House that the increases in National Assistance exceed those in National Insurance over the same period of two years. That is true. But the increases in National Assistance do not exceed the increases in National Insurance if we take the period of 1958–1961 inclusive

over the three increases in National Assistance of 1958, 1959 and 1961 and the two increases in National Insurance of 1958 and those proposed for 1961.
Since 1958, National Insurance benefits will have been increased by next April by 27s. 6d. for a married couple and 17s. 6d. for a single person. Over the same period the increase in National Assistance will be 23s. for a married couple and 13s. 6d. for a single person. There have been three increases in National Assistance over the period 1958–61. During that time there will have been two increases in National Insurance.
National Insurance benefits have gone up more than National Assistance benefits. However, I do not think that that comparison is of any importance. The right hon. Gentleman will agree with me when I say that we on these benches think that National Assistance should stand on its own and that increases in National Assistance should not necessarily coincide with increases in National Insurance and should not necessarily be of the same amount. They could be more.
A year ago there were increases in National Assistance which were not accompanied by increases in National Insurance. I thought about that when the right hon. Lady said that it seemed better to increase the two together, though not necessarily by the same amount. I agree that there are difficulties when the two come close together, but we think that National Assistance scales should be considered by reference to their adequacy in the circumstances of the time and not necessarily in relation to what has taken place in National Insurance.
I think that the House will agree that the test for adequacy of National Assistance benefits must be more exacting than that for National Insurance benefits, for the simple reason that National Assistance applicants have few, if any, resources apart from their social benefits. That means that they are living wholly or in part on National Assistance. There may be a good deal said one way and other about the additional resources which many people getting National Insurance benefits may have; vocational pensions, capital accumulation—whatever it may be. But no such argument


can be used against paying National Assistance benefits on a full scale of adequacy for a reasonable standard of life. We have to examine the proposals being made in these Regulations by reference to that test.
The proposal is that the scale for a married couple shall be increased by 5s. to 90s. a week, plus the rent, and for a single person by 3s. 6d. to 53s, 6d. I have no hesitation in saying that those levels of National Assistance are manifestly and absolutely too low. That is quite apart from any comparisons that one may make at this or at any other time between National Assistance and National Insurance benefits. I offer the view that to give a reasonable standard of life to the sick, to the unemployed, to the other people who have to go to the National Assistance Board—the retirement pensioners and others—the scale for National Assistance for a single person should be 60s. plus the rent, giving £4 a week in all and £5 for a married couple, also plus the rent, making £6 a week the minimum in all.
Those, I think, would be reasonable benefits in existing circumstances. In the case of the single person that benefit would be no more than one third of the average wage. For a married couple the benefit would be no more than half the average wage. I do not think by any test that this could be said to be too generous in the present circumstances.
I wish now to say something about the special classes for whom benefits have always been higher than the general scale. I do not know whether the Minister has received representations from the National League of the Blind. Some of us have. But, as I said earlier, there are 55,000 blind persons and 17,000 people suffering from tuberculosis who are undergoing treatment and getting the benefit of a special allowance. The right hon. Lady said that since 1948 the scale for a husband and wife had been increased by 125 per cent. and for a single person by 123 per cent. I am advised that the special scale during the same period has gone up by 96 per cent. only, in the case of husband and wife, and 94 per cent. for a single person.
In the Regulations of 1959 the Minister did widen the gap between the general scale and the scale for special cases. It began, in 1948, by being 15s.

apart and it then went up to 20s. apart, and, in 1959, became 22s. 6d, apart. There seems to be scope in the present Regulations for improving that difference between the general scale and the special scale still more.
Another thing that requires reconsideration in this connection is the allowances to children. I recall that in 1959 the Minister increased the allowances for children rather more in proportion to the increase being given to adults, and there may be a fraction of similar benefit in the new scales now proposed. But I wonder whether six grades of child allowance are justified. We see them in the Regulations—under 5; between 5 and 11; 11 and 16; 16 and 18; 18 and 21 and over 21. Is a dependent child between the ages of 16 and 18 years less costly to keep by 17s. 6d. a week than an adult?
That seems to me to raise some question. I think that the child allowance should be a higher proportion of the scale for adult dependants. We should bear in mind that in the upper ages the dependent children are usually a handicap or a considerable expense to their parents. I doubt whether that scale of allowances for children could be related to current experience of family life and domestic expenditure, and surely one of the things which we want to do in our National Assistance arrangements is to ensure that children are properly cared for and the parents of young children are in a position to give them not only the necessities, but some of the good things of life as well.
Finally, I come to the operative date, the beginning of April, which is four months from now. Last time, the Regulations were approved in June and they became operative on 7th September, a period of two-and-a-half months. Last time, the Regulations were introduced in the middle of the warmest and driest summer of this century. They became operative on 7th September, before anyone had to wear winter clothing, or had to burn a very large amount of fuel. Looking back, I note that in 1948 the National Assistance scales were first introduced in July; in 1950, it was June; in 1951, September; in 1952, June; in 1955, February, before the winter had really set in. or at least, before it was substantially over. In 1956,


they were brought forward to the month of January. In 1958, it was January and in 1959 it was September.
Now, for the first time in our experience of improved National Assistance benefits, the recipients have to go through the whole of the winter before they get the benefit. I think that is reprehensible and not paying due regard to the need of those waiting for these improvements. There is nothing here comparable with the National Insurance benefits which were linked with contributions and which the Minister said could not be introduced in advance of the change in contributions if the National Insurance fund were to remain solvent. There is no such consideration here.
The total cost, it is about £18½ million in a full year. To bring the operative date forward two months would cost £3 million, or £3½ million at the outside. I acknowledge what the Minister said earlier about the job of changing, and introducing new books in February, and changing again in April. I think that these administrative difficulties, as well as the reactions of many pensioners, would have to be studied carefully were it not for the fact that I believe that to bring this relief quickly is more important than any other factor.
I know the difficulty of giving National Assistance benefits a little time in advance of changes in National Insurance benefits. People are apt to say "You give it to us with one hand, and take it away with the other." But are we to allow misunderstandings and talk of that kind to stand in the way of bringing the relief which they will get from this combined operation? I am very doubtful whether the Minister can justify the reasons given by the right hon. Lady for deferring the introduction of these allowances until the beginning of April.
There are half a million beneficiaries who are not concerned with National Insurance benefit anyway, and they are to be held back because of difficulties relating to the rest. Although it is true that some people who will receive the increase in National Assistance will have it extinguished by improvements in National Insurance benefits, there are many people to whom the increase in

National Assistance will represent a net increase in their total resources.
To sum up this rather long discourse, may I say that our criticism of the Regulations is based on two main points—inadequacy of the amounts and the undue delay in the operative date. There are many other considerations in between, some of which I have dwelt upon, but we hope that these new and improved National Assistance scales will become available to all those who are entitled to benefit from them. Nothing should be said which would dissuade people from getting the advantage of these improvements, because, after all, it is their standard of life which is at stake. Pending a radical change and great improvement in our whole system of social security, we want them to have whatever benefits the Minister is able to provide in the meantime. On these benches, quite obviously, we shall support the adoption by the House of these draft Regulations.

4.42 p.m.

Mr. Christopher Chataway: The hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton), after a busy three days last week urging Amendments to the National Insurance Bill which suggested quite substantial increases in every kind of benefit, has seemed to urge increases today in an almost casual fashion, with none of the vehemence shown by him and his hon. Friends last week. I take this to be a matter of some significance.
I am deeply disappointed by these Regulations. I am extremely sorry to see that an elderly single person is to receive only 3s. 6d. more, and that an elderly married couple are to receive only 5s. more. It seems to me to be nothing short of ironic that there should be a campaign throughout the country on behalf of old-age pensioners, a campaign for higher old-age pensions, which has been argued entirely with reference to the poor, and that the result of that campaign is that those in most need get 3s. 6d. and 5s. respectively, while those in less need get 7s. 6d. and 12s. 6d.
I wonder whether outside, in the country, among elderly people, there would be taken the cynical view that politicians have thought that 4¾ million votes mean more than 1¾ million, which


is the number of recipients of National Assistance. I do not believe that this is the explanation of the extraordinary outcome of this pressure for higher old-age pensions. The explanation is, of course, that we stick to the principle of universality. The hon. Member for Sowerby has argued for this principle on a number of occasions, and I have listened with care to what he has had to say on this subject. He believes that we should aim for the day when National Insurance pensions will be so high as to do away with any need for National Assistance. As I understand it, that was the aim of Lord Beveridge.
Two things perhaps should be said about that. Lord Beveridge recommended that the pension fund should be built up over twenty years, and his hope was that at the end of the twenty years, it would be possible to reach a level of pension that would do away with National Assistance. The Labour Government in 1946, just as did the Conservative Government in 1925, did not wait for the pension fund to be built up, but paid the benefits straight away, with the result that the whole contributory basis of the scheme was immediately undermined.
Secondly, on this point, I think that it should be said that the level of subsistence will continually rise, because what is acceptable at one point as a suitable level for National Assistance to be paid is not going to last for many years. The result, and we have seen it for some time, is that National Insurance pensions are chasing along 20s. or so behind the level that is currently accepted as the basic minimum.
I cannot see that situation changing. We shall never be able to provide a universal pension which will do away with the need for National Assistance. Once that is accepted, it seems to me that the whole basis of giving help to the elderly should be thought out again. If it is accepted that we shall not within the near future—

Mr. J. J. Mendelson: The hon. Gentleman must not assume, because we have not interrupted his speech, that that principle is accepted on these benches.

Mr. Chataway: I realise that, but the hon. Member for Sowerby, in his speech, suggested that National Assistance rates

should now be set at £3 per week, plus rent, for a single person, and £5 per week, plus rent, for married persons. With average rents, that, therefore, means £4 per week for a single person and about £6 for the married couple.
At the last election, the hon. Members opposite certainly did not propose an old-age pension of anything like that sum. They may be able to urge that sort or thing in opposition, but it is quite Clear that no Government within the next few years, will ever be able to provide such a pension. There might come a time when a Government could provide a pension of that kind, but when that time has arrived, undoubtedly the level we shall think as right for National Assistance will be a great deal higher.
My right hon. Friend, in her introductory remarks, seemed to refer to a speech that I made and to a plan that has been suggested to her and her right hon. Friend by one or two of my hon. Friends. She seemed to imply that some of us had helped to spread the idea that there was a stigma attached to National Assistance. I hope that I have never done that, and I am sure that that would be the last intention of any of my hon. Friends. In the few cases that I have come across in my constituency of people who do not wish to take National Assistance, I have always tried to persuade them that there was no loss of pride involved. Having been through a university on a form of national assistance, I feel able to argue this case very cogently.
The fact remains, however, that there are a number of people who will not go to National Assistance. Whether one likes it or not, or thinks it irrational, there are a number of people who will not go. Therefore, if the emphasis is to be placed on increasing the supplements for those who need it, a system of giving them the supplements has to be devised which will be all-embracing. The kind of system to which I have alluded on earlier occasions would be something of this sort. Instead of continuing to increase basic rates, a system of graduated supplements would be introduced. This would give to those with small incomes or no other income the right to a higher pension. The important thing would be that these supplements would derive


from the Ministry itself and would be indistinguishable from the basic rates.
My right hon. Friend said that, of course, there had to be a test of need and income, however one dressed it up. I accept that, but it seems to me that a simple return of income could be made by pensioners which would involve no more humiliation than the return of income made by a vast section of the population today in their Income Tax affairs. On the basis of that return of income, a graded pension could be awarded as of right.
The right to a pension derives today not from contributions paid but from an Act of Parliament, and I do not believe that that right would be diminished in any way if there were such a system of graded pensions. It may be argued that there would be great administrative difficulties in this and that one could never rely on the return of income that was sent up. Certainly, there would be some elderly people who would not be capable of filling in a form. They would find it tiresome and difficult, but my right hon. Friend mentioned that 6 million visits had been made by National Assistance officials to elderly people this year and I see no reason why those officials should not be able to help these people to fill in this simple return of income.
I urge this sort of scheme on two grounds. First, I do not see how the working population, as they become a diminishing proportion of the total population, will be able to sustain an ever-rising, universal old-age pension. Secondly, and more important, I am certain that more could be done to relieve the suffering of elderly people who are in need. I know that many hon. Members opposite who speak often on this subject believe that there is something inherently wrong and vicious in the proposals that I am putting forward. I suggest that that attitude derives from the memory of a kind of means test that nobody is suggesting should return.

Mr. A. V. Hilton: The hon. Member is making an interesting point, and there is a lot to be said for it, but is he aware that many of the people who would be entitled to undergo this test have, in the past, undergone the means test and that for that very reason, with their memories of

that vicious means test, would be reluctant to give even the co-operative National Assistance officers the assistance that they need? In, fact, these people are very often the people who refuse to apply for National Assistance although they know that they could have it if they applied for it.

Mr. Chataway: I appreciate the hon. Member's point. All I say is that by adopting the sort of scheme I am suggesting we should reduce the extent to which the means test impinges on people. Let us not forget that 1¼ million accept a test of need from the National Assistance Board. If a return of income were required from every old-age pensioner, those 1¼ million people would be relieved of the last vestige of any loss of pride that might be involved in the present system.
I therefore urge that fresh consideration be given to a scheme of this sort and that we should not stick to the principle of universality when its result, clearly, is that we are giving less help than we could give to that section of the elderly people who really need it.

4.59 p.m.

Mr. A. E. Hunter: The hon. Member for Lewisham, North (Mr. Chataway) has made an interesting speech and I am very pleased to support his contention that to offer a single elderly person 3s. 6d. a week increase and a married couple 5s. increase is not sufficient. I am certain that in those remarks the hon. Member is also supported by all my hon. Friends. At today's prices and values 3s. 6d is not very much. I imagine that compared with pre-war its value is about 1s., and that the 5s. for the elderly couple would have been roughly 1s. 6d. before the war.
I am sure that we all agree with the Joint Parliamentary Secretary and my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) in their praise of the work of the National Assistance Board. However much we disagree with these amounts of assistance, the Board is carrying out the Government's instructions as laid down in the Regulations, and I am sure that all hon. Members would praise the administration. In my constituency I have never heard a word of complaint against the Board. Its officials are kindly, discreet and


sympathetic, and within the Regulations, when I have drawn attention to people's need for blankets, clothing and shoes, they always pay great attention to the cases I have referred to them; and they have the power to deal with these matters. I know that we are discussing only the Regulations, but we should remember the other services which the National Assistance Board can provide for those in need.
We can thank the Chairman of the Board for issuing this pamphlet "Help for those in need". It is a good pamphlet and sets out in simple and precise language the help which can be given. "Who can be helped by the Board?". "Application is simple and private". "Savings need not be exhausted". "Rent allowances". Those are some of the headings in the pamphlet for the guidance of those who need help. It will prove of great benefit to the needy. I hope that hon. Members will impress upon people, whether they are elderly, unemployed, or sick, the humane methods adopted by the Board for helping people.
The right hon. Gentleman has made it clear that there is no need for people to be nervous about going to the Board. There is no need today for false pride. I therefore feel that we should pay tribute to the work done by the National Assistance Board and urge those in need, whether it be due to sickness, unemployment, or old age, to go to their local office for help. I am certain that they will find the officials sympathetic, and that if help is needed it will be given quickly.
The proposed increases are small when one remembers that bread has recently risen in price, and so has coal. Some of the things which to us might not seem luxuries are luxuries to the old people, and I therefore wish that the increased sums provided for in the Regulations had been very much larger. In reply to a Question on Monday, the right hon. Gentleman told us that 1,048,000 old people were receiving supplementary allowances from the National Assistance Board. One can say that roughly one in five old age pensioners goes to the National Assistance Board for help.
When we debate the needs of these people, we debate the needs of the poorest people in the country. Their

savings may not have been exhausted, but they are not very large. These people are dependent on National Insurance, plus the supplementary allowances from the National Assistance Board. I am sure that all hon. Members have great sympathy for these people.
We cannot amend the Regulations today. We have either to accept or reject them. We want the old people and those who are sick or unemployed, or who are on National Assistance, to get these increases and my hon. Friends and I will, therefore, support the Regulations.
Another point to which I want to draw attention, and to which I drew attention during the debate on the National Insurance Bill, is the waiting period. The operative date should have been much earlier. We suggested that it should not be later than 3rd February, but I wish that these increases were to become effective from 1st January. These are the poorest people about whom we are talking, and the winter hits them hard. If we get a cold winter it means that they need more coal, electricity or gas. Also, in the winter months they need hot, nourishing, food, and more warm clothing.
I am sure that if it had been put to the civil servants in the National Assistance Board they would have been prepared to make the adjustments earlier than will now be the case, even if this meant extra work. One of our criticism's is that these people will have to wait 20 weeks for this small sum—and it is a small sum; 3s. 6d. for a single old-age pensioner, and 5s. for a married couple.
That is rather inhuman treatment. They are elderly people and a lot of them are in the evening of their lives. The period for which they will have to wait must be annoying to them. I know that the right hon. Gentleman is not hard-hearted. He has been sympathetic on other points. These people must feel some injustice at having to wait 20 weeks for the increases. I do not know whether it is possible at this late hour to make any further appeal to the Minister to bring forward the effective date, but I am disappointed, as I am sure hon. Members on both sides are, that the poorest section of the community has to wait until April before getting these small increases.
We should encourage people to use the National Assistance Board to supplement their insurance benefits. Even in my short period in the House—I came here five and a half years ago—I have seen the retirement pension increased, as have also the sickness and unemployment benefits. I wish that the increase had been more. We are going forward, and I look forward to the day when the National Insurance benefits will fully cover the retired person so that he does not have to go to the National Assistance Board for help. But there will always be some people who, because of difficulties of one kind or another, will need outside benefits, and we shall need the National Assistance Board to do what one might call the Red Cross work of society.
In supporting the Regulations, may I again express my regret at the smallness of the amount of the proposed increases. I wish that they were larger. I join other hon. Members in paying tribute to the work of the National Assistance Board in their administration of this social service.

5.7 p.m.

Miss Joan Vickers: I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Feltham (Mr. Hunter), because I know that he has a great interest in this work. He is right in saying that there will always be a need for the National Assistance Board to do what he called the work of the Red Cross in society. However much our pensions rise, the standard of living goes up, and I cannot see that there will not be some people who will need some help in some way, either because of sickness, or because of the loss of the one who earns the money, and so on. I therefore support the hon. Gentleman in his final remarks.
The hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) referred to the Annual Report of the National Assistance Board. I am glad that he did so, because I had hoped to refer to it without being out of order. I add my congratulations to the Board for the work that it has done. I understand that in 1959 it received over 2¼ million applications, and most of them entail a great deal of work.
I would also like to offer my congratulations to my right hon. Friend, who has

been the Minister of Pensions and National Insurance for probably longer than most people. He has brought tremendous benefits both by way of National Insurance and National Assistance benefits to the people of this country. We owe our thanks to my right hon. Friend for the work he has done on very difficult matters during the past years.
I notice that the Annual Report says:
… the overwhelming majority of those who seek assistance are in real need of help and are anxious to be absolutely straightforward and truthful in their dealings with the Board.
I think that we all recognise that. People do not go for National Assistance unless they really need it, and they are willing to put forward the full details of their incomes and their needs to those who are going to help them.
These increases will help to increase the standards of those who will receive them, and one realises that today we are talking about people who are most in need of help. I have already written to my hon. Friend about this. I hope that, if he makes increases in future he will make them before the winter sets in, because this is the period during which those whom we are discussing today need the help most. I have had one or two deputations on this, and I pointed out the difficulties of bringing it into effect before 1st April. We have had similar difficulties before—one remembers 1955. It was explained to the people that they would be better off when the grants were made, but they said that they would prefer to have the extra money straight away and less in the spring rather than wait through the winter.
My right hon. Friend the Joint Parliamentary Secretary mentioned the question of fuel. I would like her to tell me whether there is any flexibility about the amount of money provided for people in the smokeless zones, because the fuel that has to be burnt in those zones costs 13s. 3d. or 13s. 5d. a cwt., and one particular fuel 15s. 2d. Can these people be given extra money to cover the cost of these more expensive fuels?
My right hon. Friend also mentioned the question of rents. On 24th June, 1959, my right hon. Friend the Minister spoke about the new treatment of the


problem, in column 1251 of the OFFICIAL REPORT, and about the grant of assistance in respect of rent where a recipient of assistance is a householder. Cmnd. 1198 mentions the various scales. I gather that about 1,369,000 householders are in receipt of National Assistance and receive a rent allowance. They either own their own houses, or rent a house, or rent accommodation in someone else's house. It is rather interesting to note that of that number of householders 430,000 live in local authority houses, that 754,000 are other tenants, and that their rent allowances are on the increase.
In 1954, 21 per cent. of those residing in local authority houses who were living on National Assistance received a rent allowance. In 1958, the number increased to 29 per cent. and in 1959 it increased to 31 per cent. The amounts are very substantial. I gather that a rent allowance of between 20s. and 24s. 11d. is given to 238,000 people and that an allowance of 40s. to 49s. 11d. is given to 38,000 and 50s. and over to 18,000 people.
My main reason for bringing this to the attention of my right hon. Friend is because I feel that a person receiving a rent allowance should never be in danger of being evicted. This sometimes happens because at present the rent allowance is given in with the other allowances and no precaution is taken to see that the sum allowed for rent is actually paid in rent.
When a family has been on National Assistance for a considerable time and gets into arrears with its rent, especially if its members are tenants of a local authority, I should have thought it a good idea for the local authority to notify the National Assistance Board and for an arrangement to be made between the authority and the Board with a view to allowing the rent to be paid direct. One thing which such people need is a roof over their heads. It is a great temptation to some of these people, when they see a large sum available for rent, to spend it, for example, on the children. I know of families who have been evicted by the local authority, have got into private accommodation, and, I regret to say, have again been evicted because of non-payment of rent.
I understand that there is a system whereby the National Assistance officer requires the person to pay his rent and to take his rent book to the officer, when he is then given the rest of the money. But where money has perhaps been very short, and where there are several children, it is sometimes very difficult for a woman to take this action. Furthermore, there are the bus fares to the National Assistance Board office. I have talked to quite a number of people who were about to be evicted for the nonpayment of rent and I am quite sure that they would be quite willing for a system of this sort to be introduced. I hope that this suggestion may be considered.
I am very keen that a family should not, if it can possibly be prevented, be divided. In any case, the putting of children into care is a very expensive matter and it divides a family. Once a family has been divided in this way it is very difficult to regain the family atmosphere.
The other point in which I was particularly interested was that in regard to the Maintenance Orders Act, 1958, I had hoped when the Bill was introduced that it would result in fewer people having to receive National Assistance. I read in the Report of the National Assistance Board for the year ended 31st December, 1959:
It is the Board's general policy to encourage a separated wife (or the mother of an illegitimate child) who needs Assistance to seek her own order under the appropriate legislation, i.e. in England and Wales the Separation and Maintenance Acts, the Guardianship of Infants Acts or the Affiliation Orders Acts.
Personally, I think it very difficult for a great many women to do this, and I should have thought that the National Assistance Board could have taken action.
The Report also says:
Direct experience of the operation of the attachment of earnings procedure was, therefore, limited to the small minority of cases where it had been considered more appropriate for the Board to take proceedings under the powers contained in the National Assistance Act, 1948, i.e., section 43 in respect of wives and legitimate children and section 44 in respect of illegitimate children. Forty-one Orders under sections 43 and 44 were the subject of enforcement action after the Maintenance Orders Act came into effect. Eleven of these were not suitable for attachment


orders, mainly because the men were self-employed or had made good the arrears by the time of the hearing.
Assuming that a self-employed man has a banking account it can be garnished or it would be possible, if necessary, to put in the bailiffs.
The Report goes on:
Attachment orders were made in the remaining 30 cases and in 17 of these the orders were completely effective in ensuring full and regular payment.
I think that 17 is a very small number. One wonders how many more women could have received maintenance orders had it not been left to them to take action. It is very difficult for them to take action and also to trace their husbands, and I think that the Board has better facilities for doing that. I hope that to make the Maintenance Orders Act work more effectively and to ensure that less is received by way of National Assistance, more action will be taken in this matter.
I should also like to know whether the possession of a television set is disregarded when granting National Assistance. I am raising this point because I do not think that a television set can now be regarded as a luxury, especially for the type of people I am discussing. I should like to cite as an illustration the case of a man considerably older than his wife, the wife is illiterate—she cannot read or write. They have five children, one of whom is deaf and dumb. An experiment was made of allowing the family to have a television set. The increase in the standard of intelligence of the family, particularly of the children, owing to the special television programmes for deaf children, has been very marked. I hope that in assessing the needs of a family the possession of a television set is not set against them.
The final point I wish to mention is the question of Christmas funds. We have heard that people on National Assistance do not like to go to the Board for supplementary assistance, but in most cities, and in country towns, there are very odd-established Christmas funds, or the mayor may make an annual appeal. I am concerned about who gets this money, because we are thinking today of those who are in real need and who are on National Assistance.
I should like to know whether there is any co-operation between the National Assistance Board and the persons who run these funds to inure that the names of those on National Assistance are put forward. If there is not a fund in that area, or sufficient money to go round, has the Board any power to give an extra payment, a bonus Christmas period? The funds may work out—I should not say in unfair manner, for it is nice for the individuals who get the money—but perhaps we are not getting at the people who need it most.
The other point concerns the amount of money that can be obtained to keep up the standard of the family of a married couple with three children, which is mentioned on the last page of the Explanatory Memorandum. That family can get the sum of £8 11s., which includes money for rent. This is very generous, taking into account the wages that can be earned in some areas. With the figures at this rate, we are giving to people a really good standard of living with which they can play their part with their neighbours and friends who are, in many cases, living on similar amounts.
I am, therefore, pleased that there is to be an increase in the amount given to these people, and I hope that my right hon. Friend will be able to give me answers to one or two of the questions which I have raised. I give him my support for these proposals.

5.22 p.m.

Mr. J. J. Mendelson: It is always very pleasant to follow the hon. Lady the Member for Plymouth, Devon-port (Miss Vickers) in a debate connected with the social services, because it has been my limited but sufficient experience that she never makes a speech on this subject without throwing out practical ideas which are useful not only for the Government, but far anybody interested. She has done so again today. I did not agree with her last point, but I will come to that later.
There is a great deal to be said for providing additional machinery—and this was a point which she raised—for the tracing either of husbands or other fathers responsible for children. In our work we all meet cases which are very tragic. I am not certain, without further consideration, that such a method as she


has proposed would be the best one, but I reinforce what she has said—that the Government ought to consider this. These matters are not looked at in isolation. This should be discussed between the Departments which are concerned with matters of this kind.
There is a large number of people for whom the tracing of anybody who is responsible to them in one way or another is extremely difficult. We are sometimes not well enough informed about the helplessness with which a number of people still face problems of this kind. Sometimes these people are not made aware of the machinery available to help them. A great deal has been said in recent years about the National Assistance Board, but not about the sort of case referred to by the hon. Lady. Far less publicity has been given to some of the ways and means by which such tracing can take place. I strongly reinforce what she said about that.
I shall concentrate, at the beginning of my speech, on a number of practical points concerning the work of the National Assistance Board and the proposals before the House, before turning to some of the interesting points made by the hon. Member for Lewisham, North (Mr. Chataway), which dealt more generally with these matters and showed the emerging new Conservative social philosophy that seems behind many of the speeches that are intended to make the Board into something it was never meant to be.
The right hon. Lady the Joint Parliamentary Secretary referred to the essential need to make people aware of what the Board is there for. I was a little critical of at least the tone in which she chided the unnamed Members of this House for adopting an attitude to the Board at times which seemed to her, at any rate, to have a discouraging effect on members of the public who could and should apply to the Board.
Speaking for myself, I confess that I am always very hesitant and bashful before I eagerly advise an elderly person who comes to me for advice to go to the Board. I always find that I have to take great care before I make the decision to do so, and have to choose my words very carefully. I was not happy about

the almost triumphant tone in which the right hon. Lady reported to us that she had persuaded someone to go to the Board and that that person had received a payment of 30s.
Whilst there is general agreement that we do not want to discourage people from going to the Board when they are entitled to a supplementary payment, and when they would live in dire need if they did not apply for it, we must do nothing to make it appear as if going to the Board is part of the normal occurrences of the life of our people. I would not be a party to creating an atmosphere in which it was regarded by a large number of old people as something normal that they should accept for the rest of their lives after reaching retirement.
As I see the conception of the Board's functions, it must always be designed to meet cases which are, by and large, cases of exceptional need. While, for some years to come, we may have to resign ourselves to a position in which, in addition to people who have fallen by the wayside through sickness or some other exceptional circumstance, there will be a considerable number of elderly people who will have to appeal to it, we must never destroy the conception and the intention of doing away with the latter aspect of the Board's work and reducing the Board in the distant future to dealing with cases of exceptional need.
There is one point about the working of the Board which I have mentioned before in a similar debate, but which I would like to repeat. It concerns the working of the appeal boards. The boards of appeal under the National Assistance Board are staffed by people of great understanding. Any hon. Member who has had experience of appearing before a board of appeal on behalf of friends or constituents will testify to that. But these boards are strictly limited in what they can do. Can the right hon. Gentleman tell the House a little more about the detailed instructions which he gives to the appeal boards about how they are to decide any cases which one would call marginal or borderline cases?
If the family is well above the income level and if the case is one in which there is very little ground for appeal, then the appeals tribunal will obviously merely confirm, and rather quickly confirm, the original opinion of the officer.


But there are cases in which it appears that if the income of the family were only 1s. or 1s. 6d. lower, additional help could be given, but the chairman of the tribunal then says, and he will repeat in private conversation later, that it is impossible to allow the appeal, although his personal opinion is that the decision should have been different.
If the right hon. Lady asks us to tell those people who are in dire need and who can be helped by the Board to go to the Board, does it not follow as a corollary that the Minister should have a liberal attitude, which he should show in consultations with those who preside over the appeals tribunals, so that in cases where people might feel a deep grievance because they are just outside the borderline, they can be considered as special cases?
I know that the regulations have to be applied and that the system would break down if one allowed too many exceptions, but these things are often a matter of judgment. There might be cases in which the head of a family, who should be the main breadwinner, has been ill for many years, perhaps a victim of poliomyelitis, and is unable to work or to do only certain light jobs and whom employers will refuse work after one look at his physical condition. In such a case, it may be the wife who has been the only real wage earner for many years. In some unfortunate circumstances there may be additional people, including children, living under the one roof and yet, when application is made, it will be turned down in the circumstances which I have described.
Even if the Minister cannot promise the House that he will act in the spirit for which I am asking, it would at least illumine the problem if he would let those who are interested in this work know what instructions he gives about the kind of attitude that should be adopted by the appeals tribunals. It may be that he leaves these things very much to the tribunals themselves to operate in the light of the Regulations. The chairmen of appeals tribunals are independent persons, usually local barristers, and I have always found that I have been very fairly treated when I have appeared before them. Although there may be no

policy of actually instructing them, we all know that there are many constitutional ways in which a Minister can and does influence the attitude of boards and the attitude of chairmen, and I hope that he will say something about that tonight.
The second practical issue with which I am concerned is the time before the Regulations become effective. The Regulations are contrasted with the increase in the basic pension. I do not completely accept the argument that only people in receipt of National Assistance belong to the very poor. There are many people, to the knowledge of every hon. Member, who are not in receipt of National Assistance but who still belong to the very poor.
It is, therefore, not a good and sufficient reason to say that the timetable for these additional payments must depend on the increase in the basic pension. There are periods between increases in which nothing is done for people who come under this scheme, but there are cases in which changes in circumstances do not show themselves immediately in the cost of living index and in which it is not possible for additional relief to be given.
Many of the people whom we are now considering are already well behind what ought to be the basic minimum. The sum involved in my argument is not very large, and there remains only the problem, which I do not underestimate, of the feeling of pensioners, and particularly old-age pensioners, who receive an increase in National Assistance payments and then find that in some way much of it disappears again when there is an increase in the basic pension. We must admit that any Government facing this sort of problem would have to pay some attention to that consideration. I am not in the least concerned that it is the right hon. Gentleman himself who is in this difficulty, for I would make exactly the same point if one of my right hon. Friends were responsible.
None the less, that is not a sufficient reason for having undue delay in granting these increases, because discussion of the relationship between National Assistance and basic pensions has been going on for many years. Many pensioners are well aware of the relationship


between the two and the problems which arise, bat I am sure that if the Minister made a concession on timing, there would be many hon. Members who would make it their business to explain how the change had come about. Obviously, when the basic pension increases came into operation, there would be a change in the total benefits which those people also receiving National Assistance would receive, and the Minister should not harden his mind against our suggestion on that ground alone.
I now turn to one of the more important topics raised by the right hon. Lady. She spoke at some length about percentages. I appreciate that the percentage comparison is time-honoured and that people who are in charge of Departments have to make some reference to percentages, if only for the record; but I always feel that discussions on our social services, and particularly on National Assistance, are a somewhat special category. I am not saying that they are not political. They are highly political. Anything that the Government do is bound to be political and I have never taken the view that these debates can be non-political. But they are in a special category because it is possible to do one's best not to use statistics which might be misleading when considering social services of this kind.
I cannot accept percentage comparisons as a proper basis for these discussions, especially when these are people who did not start from scratch in the first place. These are people who have been poor for many years and it means very little to them to be told that their receipts have gone up by 123 per cent. or 124 per cent. All that is meant is that their dire level of poverty has been somewhat alleviated. Once the percentages have been mentioned for the record, they can be forgotten.
There is no doubt that although these benefits have been increased by amounts which, taken as percentages, look very nice and efficient, these are people who are still left a long way behind. The hon. Member for Lewisham, North made a point with relevance to this issue. He said that what was socially acceptable in one age was not necessarily socially acceptable some years afterwards. Clearly, we are not dealing with that sort of relationship. We are now discussing

basic necessities and all we can say is that the circumstances of these people have been made somewhat less bad than they were.
I am not directing this attack particularly at the right hon. Lady, because she is not the only one who uses percentages in matters of this kind, but I think that they have no value at all in this issue. We have to look at the actual circumstances in which so many of our fellow citizens live.
As one visits people on National Assistance, one finds that there are so many problems concerning clothing and anything to do with the interior of the house and how one is to care for children between the ages of 10 and 14 when there is a continuous problem of replacement, which result in those people still living in very difficult circumstances. That is why I had very little sympathy with the closing words of the hon. Lady the Member for Devonport, which were somewhat out of keeping with the earnestness of the first part of her speech.
I now turn to the interesting speech of the hon. Member for Lewisham, North. I regret that he is not now in his place, but I do not complain of his absence because I understand that it is not possible, merely because one has made a speech, to spend the rest of one's time in the Chamber. He said that the proposals he was putting forward, largely in the direction of making pension payments to retired persons after a great deal of investigation of their means and previous earnings, but above all of their means, would be regarded with horror by many hon. Members in the Opposition because of our experience in the 1930s.
The hon. Member said that very calmly and the real attack in that statement was not particularly obvious. He immediately discounted the thought that there was a social philosophy opposed to his own and he did not allow for the possibility that his argument would be opposed on rational grounds, without people becoming over-emotional.
That is not our approach. The Opposition are very worried about the Government working in the direction of the kind of social philosophy which is being advocated in Conservative circles and


which the hon. Member for Lewisham, North put forward. It is a policy of revising what was the generally accepted social principle in 1945, that everyone was entitled to pension as a right. What is now suggested is a variety of schemes in which the governing factor would be investigation of the circumstances of the individual and the payment of a pension as the result of that examination. There is a profound difference between the starting point of that and the starting point of our social philosophy.
It is clear that the hon. Member for Lewisham, North has one main reason for his point of view. He told the House this afternoon that we cannot possibly conceive of a future community in which it will be possible to give to every citizen an adequate pension on retirement. We on this side of the House do not share his pessimism. We are mindful of the important progress which has been made, technically and industrially, and of the continuous advance in technical and industrial development. We know that, given proper planning and proper arrangement of our ability to work and to produce, we can increase the welfare of the country considerably in years to come, and it will be quite possible to provide an adequate pension for everyone on retirement.
The main tragedy which can be seen more and more in these years is the terrible drop which people suffer from the last week of being still at work and earning a proper wage to the very poor income they suddenly find they possess in the first week after leaving work. This is of great significance if we are concerned with allowing people who have made their contribution to the industrial life of the country, without which its prosperity would not be possible, to partake in that prosperity. It is very dangerous and would be putting the clock back considerably if this change in circumstances came to be accepted as normal by any of the major parties in the State.
I think that there are reasons to believe that the hon. Member is also mindful, and rather afraid of, the fact that social expectation has changed. He told us that in years to come people will not be prepared to regard as the minimum for existence what Sir William Beveridge regarded as that minimum. Why should

they? Obviously, social expectations change and we do not want them to change only for people still at work or earning large incomes. We must also desire and expect, not with feelings of disappointment or reproach, that people in retirement shall have their social expectations changed.
It is important to remember the great new advance which has been made in this field. The firm basis of the new comprehensive plan which my party will put before the country in the not too distant future will be on the principle that there must be some relation between the actual standards of the community as a whole for those who work and the standard of life of those in retirement. The pensioners have participated in making possible the standard of life of those now at work. They must share to an increasing degree in the benefits derived by the community as a whole. I should regard that as a sufficiently logical reason, not merely the reaction to the bad days of the 'thirties, why we are rejecting the social philosophy contained in the contribution made by the hon. Member.
I return to the Minister and make this point concerning actual benefits and increases contained in these Regulations. He has to be mindful of the relationship between an increase in the pension and increased National Assistance payments, but he has also to be mindful of the fact that a considerable number of people will be in receipt of National Assistance payment increases who are in categories different from those of old-age pensioners. I should have thought that might be an additional reason why he might have found it possible to make the increases somewhat larger than they are.
I do not believe that this bogy of disappointment in the minds and hearts of pensioners, when they find they have lost some of their additional supplementary payments because of an increase in the pension and find the gap is too narrow, should be a permanent barrier making the Minister less courageous when looking at the actual figures and actual needs of those who are to receive these increases. I should have thought that courage in that respect would find its own reward.

5.50 p.m.

Mr. Percy Browne: I want to make a very short and mild intervention. As my right hon. Friend knows, I am a supporter of the philosophy, if one can call it that, expounded up to a point by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, North (Mr. Chataway). The hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson) seemed to state a principle that anyone who retired in future should get a fair percentage of the wage he had been earning during his working life from the State. Even if my philosophy is rejected, as it is by most of my hon. Friends, one thing that we as a party can say is that we are enabling people, through a prosperous State, to save more for their old age.
That is what we are encouraging. I think that a responsible attitude towards one's future both during one's working life and retirement is an integral part of our party's philosophy. As such, I suggest to the hon. Member that we hope that, in future, people will be able to put by more for old age and, therefore, rely less on the State. They should enjoy what we all wish them to enjoy, a standard of living in retirement comparable to that which they have had in their working lives. On the other hand, they should be able to save sufficiently themselves to enable them to partly look after themselves.

Mr. Mendelson: I hope that the hon. Member will remember that the main principles I stated was that we must relate retirement pensions to the increasing prosperity of the community as a whole.

Mr. Browne: I have entirely answered that point. I thought that I was relating my remarks to it. I was trying to do so. I have always felt that when we increase pensions we should increase National Assistance by the same amount. It is wrong to close the gap between those who are in need and those who get a pension as of right. I spoke at some length on this in the Second Reading debate on the National Insurance Bill and will not pursue the matter now.
I was sorry to hear my right hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary say that some of her hon. Friends had suggested that extra money should be given and that it was "moonshine" to say

that there should be this increase in National Assistance without some form of means test. I think it is recognised, it was certainly recognised by the President of the National Federation of Old-Age Pensions Associations, that to have National Assistance—State money—there should be some test of need. I have never heard my hon. Friends suggest otherwise. She also said that there was a stigma attaching to National Assistance. We have stated as clearly as the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) did that we recognise that the stigma is there and that there is no point in hiding it. What we have to try to do is to bruit abroad the extremely able exposition made by my right hon. Friend the Minister in the Second Reading debate on the National Assistance Bill in June, 1959. The more we can put that across the better.
I want to make two points and to ask my right hon. Friend two questions. The person I find most difficult to persuade to go to the National Assistance Board is the person whom I feel often needs and deserves more of the State than anyone else. He is the person who has denied himself during his working life and saved for his old age but has then seen his income slowly whittled away by the devaluation of money since the war. I should hope that when next my right hon. Friend raises National Assistance rates he will increase the income disregards, which I think are too low at 30s. I hoped that we might see them raised to 40s. this time.
This type of person is also most bitter towards What I call workshy layabouts who get National Assistance. They are very small in number. The number of unemployed who receive National Assistance, according to my right hon. Friend is 112,000. Of those there are many deserving cases, but the fact remains that there are some people—and they get themselves mentioned in the newspapers—Who are living at the State's expense.

Mr. James Dempsey: What about the cotton manufacturers?

Mr. Browne: There was a particular case the other day, but this kind of thing has happened over the years, as I think hon. Members opposite will agree. I do not imagine that anything can be


done about it, but it causes great resentment, particularly among people who have saved during their working lives and are not going to National Assistance for various reasons, perhaps because they are just above the disregards.

Mr. Dempsey: It is a well-known established fact that there is machinery which, if properly applied—it is applied in my part of Scotland—can deal effectively with the workshy. It removes him from the National Assistance Board application list.

Mr. Browne: That is not always so, certainly in my part of the country. One of the difficulties is that the sins of the father fall on the heads of the wife and children. I appreciate the difficulty and I mention it because it is frequently brought home to me as I go on my rounds in my constituency. I think that this is the right time and place to state this case.
I said that my speech would be mild and short, and it has been. I welcome these increases. I only wish that they could have been equal in amount to the basic pension.

5.55 p.m.

Mr. William Hamilton: I hope that the hon. Member for Torrington (Mr. P. Browne) will not pursue the question about workshy layabouts too far. It has a very familiar ring when we remember the pre-war days when the remark was attached to great numbers of unemployed who had to prove that they were genuinely seeking work.

Mr. P. Browne: To make it absolutely clear, I did say that the number of cases was small and I was talking about 1960, not 1937, 1938 or 1939. I am quite prepared to agree that there is a small number of cases, but it rankles with a great number of old-age pensioners.

Mr. Hamilton: It is important that the hon. Member should make clear that the numbers are really minute—

Mr. Browne: I said so.

Mr. Hamilton: In the Regulations that we are discussing he has to see this question as a broad picture. As my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie (Mr. Dempsey) said, there are

ways and means of dealing with these people.
I want to refer to the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson) and his attitude to the National Assistance Board, because my attitude is much the same. When old people come to me in my constituency and ask if they are entitled to whatever it may be, I have very great hesitation in asking them "Have you tried the National Assistance Board?", because the very suggestion creates offence in the minds of a great many of them. One of the disturbing features of this debate is the attempt to establish in the minds of our people that the National Assistance Board has come to stay and will continue to play an increasing part in our social service set-up.
That, I think, is the very reverse of what was foreseen when the social services were formulated in the years immediately following the war. It was hoped then, and we hope still, that the National Assistance Board would play a decreasing part, not an increasing part, in our social service system. Yet the fact is that the overall numbers on National Assistance in 1959 were an all-time record. However the right hon. Lady the Joint Parliamentary Secretary may clothe the activities of the National Assistance Board with humanitarianism—and I say at once that I agree with those sentiments; I think that it officers are civil, humane and kindly—the system is an intrusion into the private lives of people who have to seek National Assistance. That is the basic objection, however civil and humane these officials might be.
It is interesting to note that while we have this kind of campaign going on among hon. Members opposite there is also a campaign to get rid of the means test on university student grants because different classes of people are involved. We must remember that if the means test is reprehensible for the parents of university students, it is equally reprehensible for the people who have recourse to National Assistance.
We have had humanitarian speeches from the Joint Parliamentary Secretary, the hon Member for Lewisham, North (Mr. Chataway) and the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Miss Vickers).


All have said, in effect, that these are generous scales. Indeed, the hon. Member for Devonport quoted from the Explanatory Memorandum that a married couple will receive £8 11s. a week. She did not say that the married couple had to have three children, and one aged less than five, one between five and 11 and one between 11 and 16, before they get the princely sum of £8 11s. She went on to say that, in view of some of the wages that are being paid, they will be very well off.
This is supposed to be an affluent society. Is it affluent for people to get £7 11s., after paying £1 rent, to keep five people for a week? Is that part of what the Prime Minister calls an affluent society? Are these the people whom the Prime Minister talked about as never having had it so good? These are the people that we are concerned with today. If we take the overall figure, the brutal fact is that 2½ million of our people, with dependants, are living on National Assistance rates.
I want to refer to same of the points made in the admirable speech of my hon Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton). First, on the question of time delay which has been supported by hon. Members opposite. Whatever the argument adduced for delaying the payment of the National Insurances increases until April, it cannot be adduced for delaying the increases in National Assistance until April. The hon. Lady made the point that if they were not paid at the same time there would be misunderstanding, and the old people would be saying, in effect, that we were giving with one hand and taking away with the other.
I should have thought that we would more easily have got rid of that kind of feeling by the greater the length of time between the increase in National Assistance rates and the increase in National Insurance rates. If we pay the new National Assistance rates immediately, we are less likely to have misunderstanding in April than if we pay the two increases simultaneously. Moreover, even if the misunderstanding were equally great, as a result of our paying the increases now, the people concerned would have the advantage of three or four months of additional rates; and that would outweigh any misunderstanding which might arise.
I will refer in a little more detail to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby about the difference between the increase in the special scale and the increase in the ordinary scale. We find, when we look at the ordinary scale for a husband and wife, that the increase over 1948 is 150 per cent. When we look at the increase in the special scale for invalids, the blind and people like that, we find that where there is only one invalid involved, the increase for the couple over 1948 is not 150 per cent but rather more than 100 per cent.
The interesting point is—I cannot find any defence for this—that if the couple are both invalids the increase over 1948 is less than 100 per cent. In other words, where a couple are both invalids, the increase which they receive over the 1948 figure is less than where there is only one invalid and very much less than the increase in the ordinary scale for husband and wife.
The same kind of anomaly applies in the child ranges. For a person aged 21 or over, the increase in the ordinary scale over 1948 is 150 per cent. and in the special scale it is less than 100 per cent. In the 16 to 18 age group, the increase over 1948 in the ordinary scale is about 110 per cent. and in the special scale for the same age group it is 88 per cent. For the 18 to 21 age group, the ordinary scale increase over 1948 is 117 per cent. and the special scale increase is just about 90 per cent. I cannot see any reason why the scale increases in the special categories—for the blind and people like that—should be less proportionately than those in the ordinary scale.
I wish to refer to a question raised some time ago with the Minister. I am not sure whether it was ever answered, and, if not, I should like an answer today. It is the delay in giving National Assistance to people who become unemployed. I understand that there is a delay of two to three weeks before the National Assistance Board will pay National Assistance to those who become unemployed. If that is so, it is completely indefensible. I should like the Minister to answer this question in respect of a man who has been unemployed and who subsequently gets work. It may be a week or a fortnight before he gets work. Is the National Assistance


Board empowered to give, or does it, in practice, give, that man the full National Assistance rate until such time as he receives wages, or does it give him a loan? It is important for the Minister to say whether the Assistance Board is empowered or entitled to give him the National Assistance rate rather than a loan.
I see no reason why I should be grateful for these proposed increases. There is nothing here of which we need be proud. The fact that we have 2½ million people, in this day and age, having recourse to this kind of assistance is nothing to be proud of. I shall be able to say, "Thank you very much" only when I see the end of the National Assistance Board as it exists today.

6.8 p.m.

Mr. James Dempsey: I cannot say that I welcome the proposals in the new Regulations because they are far from adequate. One has only to look at the present scale of allowances and to compare it with the scale which will exist when these Regulations come into force to find that the recipients of National Assistance will not be as well off as we had been led to believe.
It is obvious from the White Paper that many recipients of National Assistance will not receive the full advantage of the new increases. Figures have been quoted to show that nearly 1¾ million sick, unemployed and, above all, retirement pensioners will be affected by these regulations. A married couple will receive an increase of 7s. 6d. a week instead of the 12s. 6d. a week proposed in the pension and sickness benefit increases, and a single person will receive an increase of 3s. 6d. a week instead of an increase of 7s. 6d. a week. How can anyone welcome Regulations which, on the one hand, prepare the public, and especially the pensioners, for pension increases of 12s. 6d. a week when in fact all that a married couple will receive is an increase of 7s. 6d. a week?
There are 1¼ million retirement pensioners who require to have their meagre pensions augmented by National Assistance. They believe that they are about to receive their due reward for the years of activity by their organisations and

associations and by Members of Parliament and local councils. But a married couple, instead of receiving an award of 12s. 6d. a week, will receive only 7s. 6d.
As long as we have National Assistance allowances paid above the basic pension, then there should be an understanding that, in order that retirement pensioners, in particular, may receive the full value of pension increases, the assistance scales should be adjusted correspondingly with the pension scales. I have looked back to 1948 when the first increase took place. It is evident that on all but two occasions, from 1948 to 1960 we have had similar increases in both types of benefit at the same time which have eliminated this anomaly. As long as the situation endures in which we have pensions, on the one hand, and National Assistance on the other, the only way of eliminating anomalies is to ensure that National Assistance scales are increased correspondingly with the scales of sickness, unemployment and pension benefit. Unless the Government realise that, we shall continue to have these anomalies.
I have not the slightest doubt that once these new rates are paid, we shall be flooded by petitions, representations and communications from the section of society which in my opinion needs the benefits more than any other section—the retirement pensioners. They will realise in April, 1961, that a married couple will not receive the promised increase of 12s. 6d. but an increase of 7s. 6d. This will mean, for the old folk in particular, less than they are expecting. I have always taken the view that as long as National Assistance is used to augment retirement benefits, there must be a relationship between the two scales. Consequently, I cannot welcome these proposals, which are totally inadequate.
From the White Paper we learn the scales of benefit which the recipients will be entitled to receive. I note that a man and woman, with two young children under five years of age, for example, will receive £6 4s. plus their rent allowance. Even £6 4s., in addition to the rent, is not a very large sum for a young couple to raise a family in days of economic adversity. The total benefit paid to a young married couple with three children under five years of age will be £7 1s. I do not think that the Government can argue that £7 1s. a week


is an adequate living allowance for five members of a family. It is far from it, as the scales are quite inadequate.
When we consider these scales we should be guided by the needs of the individuals who are entitled to benefit from them. We should take into consideration what life is like on such an income. These meagre increases are far from adequate to meet the needs of people who are dependent on these benefits for an existence.
The Joint Parliamentary Secretary told us that £375 of savings could be disregarded for the purpose of benefits. She should have referred to "war savings", because they do not disregard £375 in Co-operative or Post Office savings. The disregard is only of £375 war savings. If a person has £125 in a bank, 6d. a week, plus 6d. a week for every subsequent £25, is deducted from the weekly entitlement to National Assistance. We thus have the strange situation in which someone with £200 in the bank is having 2s. a week deducted from his National Assistance entitlement although the money which is lying in the bank is not even earning interest to that extent. In spite of the fact that interest is not being earned at such a rate, this deduction is made.
The only reaction of a person with £200 in the bank is to lift it from the bank and to spend it, for he will then receive his full entitlement to National Assistance. The Government's present attitude is unrealistic towards the old lady and the old man who have been frugal throughout their lives, have sacrificed themselves and have done without many of the good things in life in order to have a little nest egg for a rainy day. Their reward is to find that the National Assistance Board treats them in a parsimonious fashion. I should like to see this increase in National Assistance scales at least equal to that of the pension, sickness and unemployment insurance scales, and an entirely new approach to the whole question of disregards, in order to see that the good manager is not penalised in his eventide of life simply because he has a small nest egg in the local co-operative society or the local savings bank which he has saved at considerable sacrifice.
I should also like to see a change in the attitude towards applications by old folk for the exceptional needs grant. Here we have the great problem of the stigma of the means test. Here we find it working at its worst. I do not believe that the Minister or hon. Members create the impression in anyone's mind that they are stigmatised by virtue of the fact that they apply for National Assistance. The stigma is not created here. It is created in the process of the application by individuals for benefits and especially for the exceptional needs grant because of the very nature of the National Assistance Regulation. It is when they apply for the exceptional needs grant that we have the very thorough questioning as to their existing means, the state of their bedclothes and their beds and the other necessities of life which they own. I have always hoped that one day, so long as National Assistance is paid—and it seems that it is likely to be paid for some time—we should objectively examine the whole question of applications by old folk, especially in so far as the exceptional needs grant is concerned, in a rather different vein.
Has the Minister considered the advisability of introducing a system whereby retirement pensioners would receive some exceptional needs grant each year without regard to a means test or to the income test, as it is popularly described, although, in fact, it is a means test? Year after year these old folk are wearing out their clothes, their bed linen and their bedsteads. Surely in this age of the affluent society, when we are led to believe that life is more abundant than ever, we should see that the retirement pensioners share in that affluence, and here is a practical way in which we could help them.
The Minister should consider giving these old folk an annual grant. It is not a new principle, for the local authorities operated it year after year before the State took over the welfare of these people and introduced the National Assistance Act. It was done time after time. I was a member of a committee which gave these grants year after year. The only condition was that the recipients were retired pensioners and in receipt wholly or partly of National Assistance in order to augment their meagre means. I ask the Minister, in


these days of the affluent society, at least to examine the possibility and to see whether he cannot give our old folk such an annual grant. If the principle were accepted it could be implemented without the need to investigate a person's means or to examine his income or to assess his entitlement.
I am casting no aspersions on the officers of the National Assistance Board. I have worked with the Board's officers for many years and I have found them a very good set of individuals, most understanding, courteous and very co-operative and helpful to all, but they have to administer the Act and this means that they have to inquire; and to inquire means to investigate, and to investigate arouses a suspicion, especially among the independent type of our old folk, who are rather reluctant to state their means to any officer of any Government Department or, indeed, to any officer of a local authority for that matter.
Such a principle as I have suggested would also save the Board's time and might even economise in administration and other costs. For this reason I request the right hon. Gentleman to examine this proposition. I again remind him that he will find that this was the policy of the local authorities which, prior to 1948, administered what were known as the social welfare schemes throughout the length and breadth of this country.
I also complain about the operative date. It is far too late. The Minister must know from what was said last week, that many thousands of these people, particularly the pensioners, will never live to enjoy these increases. My hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) listed the dates, year by year, on which former increases became operative, and this is the first time since 1948 that they have not come into effect during the winter, the most difficult part of the year for the old people.
For the first time since 1948, they will have to wait nearly six months after the announcement of the increases before receiving them. No one can justify such a belated operative date for the receipt of benefits on which 1¾ million people—and particularly the 1¼ million pensioners—depend for their week-to-week existence. I would be remiss in my duty if I did not now protest

against the belatedness of the operative date on behalf of those pensioners, etc., who reside in my constituency
Speaking as I do for the old people, the most deserving section of the community, I cannot help but criticise the inadequacy of the proposals, the belatedness of the date, and the fact that the Minister has not helped in another way, as he could, by examining the principle of annual grants to retirement pensioners.
These proposals will be accepted, but I hope that the Minister realises that they are being accepted most reluctantly. A large section of the community is now living on the poverty line in contrast to the standard of living enjoyed by other sections. As long as we have such a wide gap between those who are much better off and the people of whom I speak, who are so poorly off, I and many other hon. Members must continue to protest.
We shall continue to protest until these most needful people, the pensioners, the unemployed and the sick, receive their due deserts and the entitlement, not to an existence allowance but to a living allowance. Until then, like many other hon. Members, I shall plead their cause in the hope that the constant dripping will wear away the stone of resistance and that better benefits and more adequate pensions will be paid to those sections of our community which depend on such allowances for a livelihood.

6.34 p.m.

Mr. Cyril Bence: I should not have intervened had it not been for the speech made by the hon. Member for Torrington (Mr. P. Browne), who is not now in his place. I do not intend to attack him, because he said something that has been commonly said by members of the Conservative Party throughout my life, and many years ago I thought that there was a lot of soundness in what they said. Their philosophy was to encourage people to save by their own efforts for their old age.
I practised that myself. I was an artisan in industry. For all that part of my working life I was engaged in the manufacturing of consumer durables, but I never bought them. My wife, my children and I kept a very strict household. We were very abstemious—teetotallers and non-smokers. We made our


clothes last for a long time. We had to save compulsorily because we were buying our own house. We saved much of our income.
In about 1937 or 1938 it struck me that if all the working people were as mean—or as thrifty—as I, I would be out of work. I am therefore tired of hearing the manufacturers of refrigerators and all sorts of consumer durables telling those of us who are in the medium-income group that we should save for our old age. If we did, we should be unemployed, and would have to apply for National Assistance.
It is just not good enough to propagate the idea that people in the low-and middle-income groups can save. If we save through the trustee savings banks we get 2½ per cent. on the money. I was born in 1902, and bearing in mind the fall in the value of money since then I would have needed to have saved a great deal of money to give me an income to sustain me in my old age. I do not get any advantage of capital gains through the trustee savings bank; in fact, if I buy Government stock I suffer capital losses. I have never been in the position to get into the stocks and shares market. The margin of income was so small, and one cannot go to the stock market with savings of half a crown a week. With savings like that, one goes to the Post Office.
The idea that the vast bulk of our population can save for their old age is a myth. We never had the opportunity. When wage increases come along everyone puts up the price of all sorts of products that we must buy, and the increase is taken up.
House purchase is a form of saving. I set out with the ambition of becoming a property-owning democrat, but interest rates have been manipulated, property and land values have gone up, and the result is that, instead of retiring at 65 as a property-owning democrat, I shall have to go on until I am about 115 before I escape being a property-owning democrat.
I really wish that hon. Members opposite and their friends would stop this nonsense of trying to convince us that the Government are administering the country in order to assist people to save for the days of their retirement. Some of my old friends saved for their retirement.

They cut down on the table, and in all sorts of ways. I used to write to them regularly, but they have passed beyond and I do not write to them any more. They had saved a little too much and had undermined their health. That is stupid.
This is an affluent society—or was just before the election. It has deteriorated considerably since. Prosperity in the Midlands has gone down appreciably since the last election, so our society is not as affluent as it was twelve months ago. Even so, I think that we could progress gradually to the stage when we could eliminate the need for National Assistance for people who retire. Retirement is the end of their industrial function. They are ending their functional life, so they should start their retirement with an income, enjoyed by right of having functioned in society, that is quite independent of any means test or of any any assistance from anywhere else.
It should be a pension bearing some relationship to their earnings in the past and to the general income level of the registered employed workers in society as a whole. We should work towards the goal of maintaining National Assistance only for the sickness, the unemployment, and the exceptional circumstances of those coming within the insurance scheme. The retirement pension should be at such a figure that any idea of National Assistance is eliminated.
I should like to see the elimination of the Board's function of sustaining the retired person. I am surprised that even the present Government, and the party that prates so much about the affluent society, do not see to it that that affluent society devotes more of its energies to providing greater educational facilities for the young and greater security for the old. Elderly persons should never have to submit to the means test.
One great means test is Income Tax. Taxation will fake care of those who have retired at a higher level of income as a result of their own savings and of superannuation schemes. It will not do it entirely, of course, but it will play its part in reducing excessive income. Most of my friends who are in the higher-income group assure me that the present scale of taxation puts a big hole in their earnings, and it would be strange if it


did not do the same for those retired people who have high incomes—

Mr. Chataway: The hon. Gentleman cannot say that it would cost nothing to give increased old-age pensions to the higher-income people who do not need it. On incomes of up to, I think, £2,000 a year, only one-third of the sum given would be taken back by the State.

Mr. Bence: I did not suggest that it would not cost anything. I say that Income Tax would take care of some of it, and this is preferable to the means test. It would be better to pay a higher pension and abolish the means test, and I do not think that the cost would be much greater. I hope that it would be a little greater, because I want to spread more of our prosperity to our retired people. Income Tax would take care of some portion of the cost, and I maintain that it would be better to have a higher retirement pension for all than to retain a system that applies the means test to retired people.
Another thing that these people feel very keenly is having to apply for clothing grants. It is really heartbreaking to go into the homes of old people and see how much they deprive themselves because of their independence and their determination not to have anything to do with what appears to them to be charity. I can quote a case. My wife regularly visits an old lady who has her own bungalow. She will not go out of it. She has reaised her family in it, although they are now away, many of them abroad.
We in Scotland have many old people whose children have had to emigrate because of bad Government policies in the last forty years, with the exception, of course, of the six years years from 1945 to 1951, when there was a considerable movement of industry into Scotland. Taking the century as a whole, however, there has not been sufficient industrial development in Scotland, so that many children have had to move out of the country, leaving their parents there, very often lonely. It is true that they get letters and many of them used to get a little sustenance from their children who went to the Midlands. Now, some of these poor souls have to send sustenance to their children in the Midlands, because of the short-time

working in the motor industry. Unfortunately, the support is moving the other way. I have heard tonight of one man who has come back north from the Midlands because he was out of work and could not stay there, so he has gone back home to Scotland.
With the present scales of benefit for old folks, there should be less quibbling about making an annual clothing grant. The National Assistance rates should be paid to old people who are entitled to them under the present system. I know that abolition cannot be achieved all at once—I admit that it must be a gradual process. I work in close co-operation with the National Assistance Board. Many of the people working in it are middle-aged and remember the 'thirties. They have a great compassion for people who are unemployed and people who are retired, some of them, perhaps, having retired earlier than they might have done because of industrial disease and many of them having retired after having an expensive life with the rearing of chilldren and, perhaps, sickness in their homes.
Nevertheless, the principle should be adopted that when a person who is on retirement pension receives National Assistance, there should be an annual grant, reasonably assessed, for clothing or shoes.

Mr. Dempsey: Or bedding.

Mr. Bence: Yes, bedding. A means test, possibly, could be applied, but something should be done. I do not want to give details of cases from my constituency or to detail the things we do in various voluntary organisations. The women's voluntary organisations know, however, that this is a frightful problem with old people notwithstanding National Assistance. People hate appealing for a grant for clothes, but they need it and something should be done about it.
There is something else I wish to mention about National Assistance. The welfare officers go to elderly people to assess need for making, perhaps, a clothing grant or for doing many other things, but very often conditions exist which are never revealed to the welfare officer. I know of many cases when voluntary workers in women's organisations have found shocking conditions


and a bad history, including sickness and difficulties which the person concerned will not reveal to the welfare officer, from whom a great deal is hidden, particularly by elderly ladies. I have had some shocking cases of trying to get people even to receive the welfare officer from the National Assistance Board.
The Board's officers all over the country should seek the co-operation of voluntary organisations, so that in applying benefits to which old people are entitled other views will be considered, including those, for example, of ministers of the church or voluntary organisations and local medical officers of health. I know that in the latter case there is consultation, but the experience of the voluntary organisations certainly should be brought to bear on the Board's officers as long as this frightful system continues whereby we have to subsidise the retirement pension to old people.
We belong to a progressive, dynamic society. The boast of our democracy and of our affluence will come better when, eventually, we have eliminated the idea that a means test should be applied for by anybody retiring from industry as a wage or salary earner who has paid into the Exchequer all his life. A lot of the money which goes in taxation goes below the line for financing public investment. A lot of what we could save is taken from us in taxation. This inhibits a good deal of saving. People should not be expected in their retirement to have to apply for a means test to a State which has taken, perhaps, hundreds of thousands of pounds from them by taxation. They have contributed to the National Insurance Fund and towards their pensions, yet when they reach retirement age the monetary payment is too low. This is because of the fall in the value of money. It has been falling since I was a child. It was not the Labour Government which began the fall. It started long before that, in 1914, when I was only 12 years of age. But it started even long before then. I could tell stories about the value of money going back to 1500. It has always been falling.
It is shocking that every now and again retired people must be picked up by the means test and National Assistance to give them a pension which will

give them a decent standard in their retirement. The fall in the value of money is not their fault. They did not start it. All sorts of economic and uncontrolled and unplanned forces have destroyed the value of their pension, and we must have the means test and National Assistance to give them back what contemporary society is stealing from them. Uncontrolled economic forces reduce the value of money and lower the standard of living of these people, who cannot organise professionally or go on strike to restore the purchasing power of their pension. Let us hope, therefore, that the day will soon be here when the retirement pension will be of such a nature that there is no need for Public Assistance.

6.55 p.m.

Mr. William Ross: Last week we had three long but interesting days discussing social insurance and the problem of the prevention of poverty and hardship in old age and seeking, however inadequately, to make a contribution towards the solution of that problem. We on this side felt that the measures taken were quite inadequate for the problem. What we have been doing today is recognising the shortcomings of what we did last week. The hon. Member for Lewisham, North (Mr. Chataway), for example, recognised it equally himself, but he offers a different solution from us.
Today, we are dealing with the relief and alleviation of poverty in age, in sickness and in unemployment. In other words, we have passed from the illusion of last week to the realities of today. From prevention to alleviation and, however we disguise it and with whatever gentle terms, to relief of poverty.
The first thing we must do is to recognise that we are dealing with the dangers of poverty and destitution in circumstances that must evoke the sympathy understanding and generosity of the whole House and of the nation. Over 2½ million people are dependent on what we are doing today. Of the allowances paid weekly by the National Assistance Board—1,800,000, to use the latest figures which we have been given today—seven out of every ten of them are in respect of National Assistance benefit supplements. Additionally, seven out of ten of all payments of weekly allowances are


in respect of old people. We thus get a picture of the kind of person with whom we are mainly dealing.
It is stated in the Report of the National Assistance Board, and it was repeated by the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Miss Vickers) today, that the people who seek the help of the Board are in real need. When we consider their numbers, it mocks our sloganised affluence and the catch phrases about our relative well-being. How is this situation to be dealt with? We have had debate after debate in Committee and in the House and there has seemed to appear from the party opposite a group of new crusaders, the protectors of the very poor, who said that what the country had should be concentrated on the most needy and that we should never take steps that would give help, albeit indirectly, and without intention, to people who were relatively well off and deny it or give less to those who were really in need.
We have heard some of the apostles of concentrated assistance today. I am sorry that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government has left the Chamber, because I was about to quote him, having given him warning of my intention to do so. Here is part of the theory, and I quote from what the hon. Gentleman said in Standing Committee on 5th March last year:
… no help at all is given by a broad increase in the retirement pension to those who need it most unless simultaneously the National Assistance Board standard is increased by at least as much."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee A, 5th March, 1959; c. 304.]
Having last week increased the pension for a single person by 7s. 6d., we are today increasing the single person's scale from the National Assistance Board by only 3s. 6d This means that whereas the whole body of pensioners will get an increase of 7s. 6d. in the first week of April, those in receipt of National Assistance will get an increase of only 3s. 6d. Equally, whereas last week we gave a pension increase of 12s. 6d. to a married couple, the increase for those married couples who cannot manage on what they have and who have to turn to the National Assistance Board is to be only 5s.
How does that fit in with speech after speech made by the hon. Gentleman who, before those speeches, built up a reputation in this House and has gone from the back benches to the Front Bench? The Minister will remember that 'he complimented the hon. Gentleman on making that speech. If the right hon. Gentleman likes, I will quote what he said. The Minister must remember that all through this controversy which we had before the election and since on our proposal for a 10s. increase, when it came to making calculations about what it would cost, the right hon. Gentleman always said to us, "But you must also increase the National Assistance scales by the same amount". I do not think that I am being unfair.
The right hon. Gentleman said something about this during the election. In a speech on 1st October, 1959, he said:
It is a very odd way to go about relieving hardship by giving 10s. in full to the peers and the field marshals and less than that to the poorest pensioners.
That is exactly what the right hon. Gentleman is doing today. It is only the indisposition of the former pedlar of political pills and potions, the celebrated doctor on the Front Bench, which prevents him coming in and putting up the banns, because he was the man who first introduced the question of the field marshal. The field marshal will get his increase of 7s. 6d., but the poorest person on National Assistance, by definition the most needy, is to get 3s. 6d.

Mr. Dempsey: Sixpence a day.

Mr. Ross: The right hon. Gentleman must justify this.
The right hon. Lady tried to justify it. I must compliment her. She made a splendid speech, calm and reasonable. Of course, I did not agree with most of it, but I loved her phraseology. It was excellent and tactfully chosen. According to the right hon. Lady, when there are increases in National Insurance scales, they go up, but when there are decreases in National Assistance supplements they are adjusted. Why did she not simply say that they go down? That is what will happen to the supplements. They are to be adjusted downwards.
The right hon. Lady also said, "But you must remember that last year the National Assistance scales were again adjusted." Her phrase was that people


on National Assistance had been given an advance of their share of the nation's prosperity—an increase of 5s. for a single person and, I think, 9s. for a couple. If she talks to old-age pensioners or to people on National Assistance, they will give her her answer. They regard it not as an advance of their share of the prosperity of the country but a belated atonement for the sins of 1958, when the pension was raised by 10s. for a single person and the scale by only 5s. Therefore, their net benefit was not 10s. but the 5s. an adjustment which is condemned by Tory speeches about helping the needy. In addition, the tobacco coupon worth 2s. 4d. was withdrawn so that the net gain to the most needy was 2s, 8d. What was done last year barely met the injustice of 1958 and should not and cannot be placed beside this proposal concerning the adequacy of the share of prosperity for those on National Assistance.
I regret that we have not had a realistic facing up to what was said by the hon. Member for Lewisham, North. Subsistence scales do not remain static. They are adjusted according to the standard of living. I defy anyone to defend the meagre increases which are condemned against the increases given to some people who need them less. I think that they can equally be condemned in the light of the standard enjoyed by the working population.
We are here dealing with the old, the sick and the unemployed. The unemployed enter more and more into this question. If a man between the age of 18 and 21 is unemployed, he will be entitled under the new National Insurance benefits after April to £2 17s. 6d. But he will not be entitled to them if, when thrown out of work, he has to resort to the Assistance Board. The scale laid down for a man of 18 to 21 who is a member of a household is 38s. For a man of 21 or over it is 49s. This is one injustice which should be reconsidered.
I do not think the Government are being fair. I should like to know how much money they will save as a result of their proposal. The answer of the right hon. Gentleman given some time ago to my hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie (Mr. Dempsey) was that for every shilling in disparity

between the increases in National Insurance and those in National Assistance there is a saving of £3 million. He should, therefore, know what will be the real cost. What will happen is what happened last week. A greater measure of the support of the old, the sick and those who have hitherto been getting a supplement on National Insurance from the National Assistance Board will be borne by the contributors through the increased pension.
The hon. Member for Lewisham, North and his band of crusaders must be very disappointed. It seemed at one time that they had more or less convinced the Government, that the National Assistance Board would be the new chosen instrument and that we would get a new super-National Assistance Board. Then the Government changed their mind. They had a look at the meagreness of the graduated benefits which will come out of the new scheme and appreciated that even a man of 40 years of age drawing average wages and being in the graduated scheme for the next twenty-five years with his graduated pension would still have to resort to National Assistance.
What the hon. Gentleman is suffering from is an acute case of graduated jitters. He more than anyone else, having examined this scheme which he has supported since he came to the House, at any rate, by implication and probably paraded it with certain joy at the election, realises that it will flop. It will not meet the problem. He therefore says, "We have to face it that the working population cannot sustain a rising pension". That is probably right concerning the working population. But we are not talking about the working population; we are talking about the nation.
Rising standards can only come from rising production and rising national income. Is it not possible to devise a pension scheme as of right in which there can be built up the dynamic to ensure that there will be an increase of the pension in accordance with the rising standards of the nation? The hon. Gentleman should be careful of the meretricious attractions of the scheme which he put forward. The real attraction of it which first dazzled the Government was that it was the cheapest way of dealing with poverty and ignored


altogether the possibilty of giving people a decent pension as of right. However, he had better continue his argument with his right hon. Friend. When it comes to trying to convince him of the folly of the graduated scheme, the hon. Gentleman will have some support from us on this side.
I am glad that my hon. Friends the Members for Feltham (Mr. Hunter) and Penistone (Mr. Mendelson), and others, raised the question of the date. Whatever may have been said last week about the impossibility of introducing the new National Insurance benefits at an earlier time, those arguments do not apply to the introduction at a much earlier date of the new National Assistance scales. Half a million, if not more, of the 1,764,000 weekly allowances are paid to people who have nothing to do with the supplement of National Insurance benefits. Denying them and others in need in respect of this mystic coincidence of inspiration which comes from two independent bodies, the National Assistance Board and the Minister, concerning the need and timing of new insurance scales and new assistance rates, should not blind us to the fact that we must introduce these increases as quickly as we have done in the past.
The Minister has caught up with his own record of good administration. He has done it before. Let him do it again. If the hon. Member for Lewisham, North, having run a mile in under four minutes, had doubled his time next time out, he would have been very dissatisfied with himself. But not the Minister. He, having created new records in administration and brought in desirable benefits and increases in scales, cannot expect us, or indeed himself, to be pleased with this business of waiting five months before introducing them. I sincerely hope that he will think about the matter again.
I do not accept the idea which the right hon. Lady put forward that there will be doubts, misunderstandings and confusions. Let me assure her that there will be confusions anyway when people get an increase of 7s. 6d. in one pension and then 4s. is taken off the National Assistance supplement. There will be no misunderstanding. People will merely blame the Government and will see in

it once again the perversity of hon. Members opposite who have gone back on everything they said about helping most those in need.
I think we should bear the position about timing well in mind. I should like the people on the assistance scales to get the benefit of what meagre increase they are to get, the full benefit. I have not the slightest doubt that we shall see—all the signs are present—a considerable increase in the cost of living, and probably before next April. We have seen a rise over the past few weeks and I understand that the price of bread is going up again.
In respect of many of these people bread counts more than anything. Take the position of a family with children. People forget, incidentally, that there are over 450,000 children involved in the work of the Assistance Board. The increase in respect of the children will be reduced in relation to the price of bread. The increase for children under the scales are not doing justice to the generous feelings of the Minister. They represent an increase of 1s. for the young child and 2s. for the older child. I think that the right hon. Gentleman could have done better. We think that the blind and those undergoing voluntary treatment for tuberculosis are being asked to give up too much. It is a great temptation for people to refuse treatment and to carry on work at a time when they should be having treatment for their own benefit and for the benefit of their family. I ask the right hon. Gentleman to consider the plea of my hon. Friend regarding those categories of people.
Altogether, I find it a bit disappointing and I cannot be satisfied that the nation could not have done better than this. My hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby said, rightly, that we do not want to see the National Assistance Board playing the dominant part which it does in the affairs of so many people today. The only way to prevent that is properly to develop the insurance principle and the benefits under our social security scheme.
That does not mean that we belittle the work which the Board is doing. Far from it. I was sorry that we had references to the "workshy" and "idlers". It puts this thing far too much out of proportion. We had a reference to "Idle Jack," and by that we


do not mean the Minister, because no one would confuse the right hon. Gentleman with "Idle Jack" after what he has been doing over the last few weeks.
We appreciate the amount of work done by the Board and the tact with which it carries out certain parts of its work, and the strength and courage with which it tackles those people who are work shy and shiftless. We should be paying a tribute to it. If during this past year the Board had received publicity for the good work it is doing on the same scale as the publicity it got over one particular case, we should be getting a far better presentation of what is being done to meet real need. The officers of the Board are doing wonderful work, much of which is the result in the past of the kind of criticism which we have heard here today.
The question of rent was raised by the right hon. Lady and I think more could be done about that. Some questions need to be answered about how the rent is paid. The right hon. Lady was worried because money was given to some applicants and the rent was not paid. I believe it is open to an official of the Board actually to pay the rent direct. I am equally concerned about something else. I hear that it is a practice in some places not to hand over the money to an applicant until he has produced the rent book to show that the rent has been paid. That rent can be paid only out of the weekly allowance, which does not include the rent allowance. In other words, the rent allowance is withheld until the rent has been paid. The difficulties of life in respect of these weekly allowances are such that they are almost driving these people into debt. Often their rent is not paid and they are evicted. Then the loser is not the National Assistance Board but the local authority or the property owner. I ask the Minister to examine this to see whether we can devise a better way of dealing with the matter.
The number of people who defraud the National Assistance Board is relatively few and action is taken. But I should have liked to have seen more publicity given to something which appeared in the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General the other day. I refer to tax fraud and evasion.

In 1950–60 there were 13,734 cases and the people concerned were not on National Assistance. The sums amounted to £19,500,000. That is more than the cost of what we are doing today in relation to these increases, without taking into consideration offsets and savings.
The National Assistance Board is doing wonderful work and we are glad of it. But we wish to build up a system of social security which will result in a limitation being put on that kind of work and make the work of the Board more in the nature of welfare work which it should be able to do. We cannot vote against these Regulations, but I think that we have made our position clear. We do not think that they are satisfactory in view of the injustice being done to the neediest in the land. We do not think the position is satisfactory in relation to the rising standards of their neighbours, with which obviously these people must compare themselves. We do not think it satisfactory to withhold even the meagre advances until next April. I wish to pay tribute to what has been done and what the Minister said last year about disregards. But all we have done in relation to that is to blunt the edge of poverty. We have not yet erased it.

7.17 p.m.

The Minister of Pensions and National Insurance (Mr. John Boyd-Carpenter): I wish to thank the hon. Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) and one or two of his hon. Friends for the very courteous references they made to the administration by the Chairman, members and staff of the National Assistance Board of their manifold and delicate duties. I think that the House appreciated very fully the somewhat nostalgic way in which the hon. Gentleman said that he wished quite as much good will could also have been directed towards the staff of another great Government Department. He was saying it, I thought, as an indication of the truth of the fact that it is more blessed to give than to receive or, as Edmund Burke very well put it:
To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
I should like to take, first, what I might call the individual points which hon. Members have raised during the debate and then, at the end, come back


to deal with the main issue or the nub of it. I take, first, the question by the hon. Member for Sowerby about prescription charges levied on people who, now being on National Assistance, receive a refund of those charges, but who, as a result of the combined changes next April, will be taken off National Assistance.
The Assistance Board proposes to remind those who will cease to receive the refund as a result of the combined operation that they can come back to the Board in future if they are in need of help to meet these charges; and, as I have more than once told the House, it is the practice of the Board—if the payment of one of these charges does put a person concerned in need by Assistance standards—to meet, not merely that part of the charge which puts the person in need by those standards, but the whole of the charge. I think that that reminder, and that practice, will meet the point which the hon. Gentleman had in mind.
The hon. Member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson) asked me to instruct what he called the appeal boards, by which I think he meant the National Assistance appeal tribunals, as to the way they were discharging their duties. In the first place, I have no power so to do, and, secondly, I am sure that I ought not to have any such power. I think, particularly in the atmosphere following the Report of the Franks Committee, that it should be made completely clear that these bodies are independent of the Minister and that it is their duty to apply the statutes and regulations in complete independence. As the hon. Gentleman had made the point, I thought that I ought to mention that.

Mr. Mendelson: The Minister will remember that I immediately added that it is quite possible that he does not instruct these appeal tribunals at all, but it is always possible for a Minister to encourage an atmosphere of being liberal with these people.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: Where we have wholly independent statutory bodies, I do not think that it is for a Minister to indicate to them, even indirectly, how they should discharge their duties. If the Minister is not happy about the way they are discharging their duties, it is his duty to alter the law and the regulations

which they apply, but certainly not to give them hints on what to do, which they not only do not have to, but would be quite wrong to, follow.
My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Miss Vickers) raised a number of points. She asked why the Board very often left it to a deserted wife to take proceedings for maintenance, instead of exercising the power which it has to take those proceedings itself. The main reason why the Board prefers to let the lady do it herself, with due help and advice, is that, in cases where the Board takes the initiative and obtains the order, the order remains valid only while the lady in question is on National Assistance. If she comes off Assistance, she will benefit from the order only if she has applied for it herself or it has been applied for in her name. Quite plainly, in the case of a lady who might get work and come off Assistance, as happens in many of these cases, it is much better that she herself should obtain the order. That does not mean that the Board does not exercise its discretion—it does in many cases—but it explains why, in a number of cases, it is unwilling to do so.
I should like to tell my hon. Friend that possession of a television set is disregarded. It is treated as part of the contents of the home, which, together with the home itself, are not taken into account by the Board in assessing means. My hon. Friend referred to Christmas charities. Those who run these charities, often on a local basis, very sensibly consult the Board about the direction in which the gifts may go, and the Board's officers are only too glad to help them. I will come to my hon. Friend's other major point in a moment.
To my hon. Friend the Member for Torrington (Mr. P. Browne) I would say that we reviewed the disregard system very thoroughly in the legislation and regulations which went through this House in the summer of last year. The general effect, as the House will remember, was an increase in most of the disregards of about 50 per cent. I feel that, though it is obviously one's duty to keep this matter under review, these are changes which, quite clearly, ought not to be made each time it is necessary to change the scale rates themselves. The very considerable action


which we took last year, in fact, shows that we are not out of sympathy with a good deal of what my hon. Friend said as a matter of general principle on this point.
The hon. Member for Sowerby asked why the differentials in respect of the blind and the tuberculous special scales were not on this occasion being increased. What, as he mentioned, and for the sake of clarity I will repeat, is being done, is that these scales are being increased by reference to the main scales, and the differential remains, in general, the same—at 22s. 6d. per week for single people. It has not always been the practice to alter these scales when the main rates have been altered. They were increased in 1952, 1955, 1956 and 1959, but not in 1950, 1951 or 1958. I think that there are probably good reasons for not moving them automatically when the main scales are altered.
Perhaps one can divide them into two classes. The special rate for the tuberculous goes back to the years during and after the war, when a special inducement was designed to persuade people suffering from pulmonary tuberculosis to have an incentive to abandon work and obtain treatment. Fortunately, there has been very great progress in that direction, and, although I should be in trouble with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Health if I were to say that tuberculosis is not still serious, the way in which the incidence of this disease has altered is a, matter for very great congratulation.
The scales for the blind are much more in actual recognition of the compassion which everybody feels for people who suffer from that terrible disability. On the other hand, and particularly in the case of the blind, and in the case of those suffering from diseases generally, the Board's use of its discretionary powers is such that there is probably not as much additional advantage in singling out these two classes for special treatment as might appear at first sight; the Board pays particular attention to people with serious disabilities or disorders of one kind and another. With these considerations in mind, the Board has not, on this occasion, proposed an increase in the differential, though it proposes an increase in the amount. But that does

not exclude consideration of it in the case of future or further increases.
My hon. Friend the Member for Devon-port, in her other main point, also raised the question of the payment of rent direct to the local authority in its capacity as landlord, in order to prevent the person assisted getting into difficulty and perhaps risking eviction. On occasion the Board does make this payment, but it is in general reluctant to do so, unless it is absolutely necessary. It is reluctant to do so because it does not think that it is a good thing, in general, to deprive the recipients of assistance of the responsibility of themselves managing the moneys that are allowed and allotted to them.
It is to be hoped that people will not necessarily think—particularly younger people in whose case this arises—that they are to be on National Assistance for ever, and it is a good thing that people should not lose the right of the management of their own affairs. Therefore, though the Board will do this in the extreme case, and is quite prepared to consider doing it in the extreme case, it does not feel disposed to do it easily, and I am expressing a personal opinion when I say that I feel a very considerable sympathy for its view in this respect.

Mrs. E. M. Braddock: Will the Minister look at the whole question of the payment of rents? Is he aware that a person on Assistance does not receive the money which is designed to pay the rent during the week unless she has already paid the rent? It is the ordinary amount, less the rent, and if she then does not pay the rent and take the book to the Assistanct Board to show that she has paid it in time, the rent amount is not then paid and the local authority is placed in the position of accumulating rents against tenants, while the Assistance Board pay rent to nobody, so that it gains, as far as rents are concerned.
There are very many of these cases in Liverpool, on which we have had a lot of discussion with Assistance Board officers, and this position still obtains, although we have at last got a slight adjustment. That is the general method, and I think that it is a wrong method for the Board to pay an amount less the rent to a person, out of which she has


to pay the rent to the local authority or the private landlord, and if she does not, she gets nothing at all, and neither does the landlord or the local authority.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I should not like to judge or express an opinion on cases such as the hon. Lady has given without knowing and studying the full facts. If the hon. Lady cares—I think that was the object of her intervention—to let either the Chairman of the Board or myself have the particulars, the point, which I think I have understood quite clearly, can then be looked into.

Miss Vickers: I agree that my right hon. Friend may not want to express a view on individual cases, but I am concerned about people who may be evicted. It is these people whom I want to help and save from eviction. I ask that in all these cases consideration should be given to making regulations that would prevent eviction.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: My hon. Friend may recall that my earlier remarks were that we were prepared to do that in that sort of case. I do not want to generalise from a particular case; I know that my hon. Friend is interested in one. There is a dispute about the facts in that case, but I understand that in it the particular difficulty with which we are now dealing does not arise. This is a matter in which, in appropriate cases, the Board is prepared to make payments, though with reluctance.
I come now to the main issue, on which I shall not detain the House for more than a few moments. I should like to stress that for the recipients of National Assistance these proposals are the second instalment of an improvement in real standards which began with the changes effected and approved by the House last year. The House will remember that we discussed those recommendations in June last year. The point was then made clear, and not challenged, that whereas previous increases in the National Assistance scale rates had, with a certain margin, been designed to compensate for increases in prices, the increase of 5s. in the single rate and 9s. in the married rate on that occasion was almost exclusively an increase in standards.
This body of proposals in these Regulations is a second instalment of that improvement in standards. It is not fair, therefore, to judge this matter as an issue of policy without recalling that. The point was made with his customary vigour by the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross), and by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, North (Mr. Chataway) with his customary charm and persuasiveness, that what we were doing was to give more to the people not on Assistance and less to those on Assistance, or, in other words, less to those most in need. That argument is only tenable if one takes these proposals in isolation, but it seems to me completely wrong so to do. What we did and I hope that the House will agree that it was right, was to give last year, in advance, to the most needy the larger part of the increase in standards which it is now possible also to provide for the whole body of recipients of the National Insurance retirement pension.
It is right, therefore, to take these Regulations and those which the House approved last year together. If we do that, we see that, as a result of this operation, persons on Assistance will find that, since the last overall operation in January, 1958, their income has increased, in the case of a single person, by 8s. 6d., compared with 7s. 6d. for the recipient of National Insurance benefit, and by 14s. as against 12s. 6d. for married couples. It is, therefore, not fair for the hon. Member for Kilmarnock to say that this is helping peers and field marshals—

Mr. Ross: I did not say that. It was the right hon. Gentleman who said it.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I recognise that it is a better phrase than the hon. Member could have invented. But this is not what we are doing. Taking the operations since the last overall change in 1958, we are giving more to those on assistance.
Then the hon. Member for Kilmarnock fell into considerable error. He said that we must not take into account the September, 1959, changes because they were to compensate for the withdrawal of the tobacco coupon. He is quite wrong. The coupon was withdrawn in January and February, 1958, and the changes made at that time were far


more, in respect of National Assistance as well as National Insurance, than was needed to compensate for the withdrawal of the coupon. In face of that fact the hon. Member cannot say that we must disregard the changes in 1959 and leave them out of account. He cannot use the tobacco coupon twice. That, indeed, would be only too simple. It was more than compensated for in 1958.
The important fact remains that, taking this operation as a whole, we are not making more of an improvement for the recipients of insurance. Looking at it in another way, the improvement over 1958 is 15 per cent. single and 16 per cent. married for insurance, and 19 per cent. single and 18 per cent. married for assistance.
The hon. Member for Kilmarnock was very firm about one point. Is it now the case of hon. Members opposite that on every occasion when National Insurance benefits are increased the Assistance scales must be increased to the same full extent? [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear"]. If that is the argument, where does it lead hon. Members opposite? The fact is that Assistance scales are moved more frequently than Insurance scales. That must have been the object of those who built up the Board in 1948, because one can make the changes—as we are seeking to do today—by regulations, which is a speedier method, taking up less parliamentary time. As a matter of history, since 1948 this is the fifth increase in insurance and the eighth increase in National Assistance.
Let us see where we are leading. If we move National Assistance and National Insurance by the same amount, we are in a dilemma; we must never move National Assistance separately at all, otherwise we shall have Assistance scales very far ahead of insurance. [An hon. Member: "Why worry?"] One may say "Why worry?" But that kind of policy does not square with the reiterated attack by hon. Members opposite on the number of recipients of National Insurance retirement pensions who are receiving supplementation, because the more we increase Assistance scales relative to Insurance scales, the more persons on Insurance benefits are, as a matter of pure mathematics, eligible for and will receive supplementation.
Even in our debate last week the hon. Member for Sowerby said there were too many cases of supplementation and that the numbers should be reduced, but the hon. Member cannot align that view, which is held in many directions, with the view which now appears for the first time to be that of hon. Members opposite—that we must move Assistance scales every time we move Insurance scales and to the same full extent. If we do that, the proportion supplemented remains identical.

Mr. Houghton: I do not know to whom these remarks are being addressed, because if the right hon. Gentleman listened to my speech, as I thought he did, he will recall—and he will certainly see it on the record—that I said that our policy was that National Assistance should stand on its own. I said that there should be a more exacting test of adequacy for National Assistance than for National Insurance, that the frequency of change of assistance might be greater than in the case of National Insurance, and that the increases could very likely be more for National Assistance than for National Insurance. I am sure that there is not a single word of that with which the right hon. Gentleman would disagree, and I apply that test to the increases now proposed.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The hon. Member prefaced his intervention by asking to whom I addressed my remarks. I was addressing them to the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and the hon. Member for Coatbridge and Airdrie (Mr. Dempsey), whom I am glad to see retains the view that the increases should be the same.

Mr. Dempsey: Yes, as long as National Assistance continues.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I listened to the speech of the hon. Member for Sowerby. There is a great deal with which I do not disagree, but, owing to the diversity of testimony, and perhaps the manysidedness of truth on the other side of the House, he must allow me to deal with the argument made by his hon. Friend, even though he does not agree with it.

Mr. Ross: I suggest that the right hon. Gentleman should address his remarks to, and ask questions of, not anyone on this side, but the Minster whom I


quoted. I quoted the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. In case the right hon. Gentleman has forgotten, I will quote it again:
… no help at all is given by a broad increase in the retirement pension to those who need it most unless simultaneously the National Assistance Board standard is increased by at least as much."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Standing Committee A, 5th March, 1959; c. 304]
We did not say it; it was said by a member of the Government.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary, to our loss, did not take part in this debate. Therefore, I must confine myself to replying to those who did, and to the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Ross: The right hon. Gentleman agreed with what was said.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: There is nothing in what my hon. Friend then said which is inconsistent with what I have now been saying, which is that one does not necessarily make the same change at the same time, but that one bears in mind, as I hope we shall continue to bear in mind, the fact that what we are doing now, taking into account what we did last year, is to bring the National Assistance increase above the National Insurance increase. If the hon. Gentleman will appreciate what has been done, he will see that that is so.
I will come back, for the purposes of comparison, to what the hon. Member for Sowerby—and I hope he agrees with this—said was the true base, that is, 1948. The result of these changes in April will be this, on the base of 1948. National Insurance will be up 121 per cent. on the single, and 120 per cent. on the married rate. National Assistance will be up 123 per cent. on the single, and 125 per cent. on the married rate. Taking the operation as a whole, which as the hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well is the only sensible way to do it, he will see that we have more than maintained the balance. We have in some measure increased it. It is absolute nonsense, and the hon. Gentleman knows it, when thinking of the different purposes of these two social benefits, to think that, when one moves the one, one has to move the other by the same amount at the same time.
Even this discussion of scale rate against scale rate is completely misleading. It is not comparing like with like. The hon. Gentleman knows that whereas in the case of the Insurance benefits there is only one addition—for increments which pensioners can earn by additional contributions, and which about one-fifth of the existing pensioners have—on average 7s. 6d. a week—on the Assistance side of the equation there are, first, the discretionary additions averaging at the moment about 7s. 3d., but drawn not by one-fifth, but by two-thirds of the retirement pensioners who are drawing supplements from the Board, and, secondly,—and this has no parallel on the insurance side of the equation—there is provision for rent.
The provision for rent includes, I think in 99 per cent. of the cases where supplementation is paid, an allowance on the basis of the rent and rates actually paid. The latest figure for rent paid or taken into account in assessing assistance is, to all intents and purposes, £1 a week. Therefore, the comparison is not between 57s. 6d. National Insurance and 53s. 6d. National Assistance. It is between 73s. 6d. National Assistance and 57s. 6d. National Insurance. Even that ignores, for the sake of saving time, the discretionary additions. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman's attempt to work up a great grievance because of this comparison between two scales, which in truth and in fact have no relation, was an entertaining dialectical exercise, but it did not take serious thought or thinking about this matter very far.
I agree with the hon. Member for Sowerby that we are concerned with National Assistance scales on their merit. Although one may criticise these rates, they amount, as I have shown, to an improvement of 123 per cent. and 125 per cent. in cash terms above the 1948 level. The retail price index over that period has risen 58 per cent., and, if the House wants to know, in real terms the single rate of assistance on today's prices will be about 15s. above the level it was at the beginning in 1948, and is about 10s. above the level in real terms at which right hon. and hon. Gentlemen opposite left it in 1951.
I know that the hon. Member for Penistone dislikes percentages, and I sympathise with his feelings, but they are at


least a guide to progress. If the percentages showed that the scales have diminished and not increased, I am sure that hon. Gentlemen would overcome their antipathy to them. This is, in fact, a further improvement in the real value of the scales.
The only remaining point of substance seems to be the question of timing.

Mr. Houghton: Before the right hon. Gentleman leaves the question of improvements in real value, I am sure that he will agree that improvements in real value represent a movement only from the basic conditions of the Beveridge Report, and are no more than an attempt to keep the National Assistance beneficiaries abreast of rising standards of living. It is not a bonus or an addition to their standards which place them out of relationship with the rest of the community. In fact, they are still far behind.

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The hon. Gentleman is quoting my speech last year when I advocated the last lot of increases on precisely that basis. It is, of course, our policy to give to, by definition the poorest section of our society, a share in the rising standards which sound economic policies are bringing about for the community as a whole.
When one is measuring the extent to which that has been done, one has to start on the base line of what was judged to be the subsistence scale by hon. Gentlemen in 1948, and it is relevant to see that as part of that policy of making improvements for this section of society whether in real terms, or in percentages, whichever the hon. Member for Penistone likes, we are proposing to make this further appreciable improvement.

Mr. W. Hamilton: Will the right hon. Gentleman deal with the point about unemployment?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: The hon. Gentleman will see that I answered a Question on this point some weeks ago, and I would rather not add to that considered Answer now.

Mr. Dempsey: Will the Minister deal with the point about annual grants for exceptional needs for retirement pensioners? Will he give some indication of his views on such a principle because

formerly they were operated by local authorities when they administered social welfare schemes?

Mr. Boyd-Carpenter: I find some difficulty in seeing the relevancy between the hon. Gentleman's idea in this respect and the proposal to increase the scales of National Assistance paid by the National Assistance Board, which is what the House is now considering. I can only say, in reply, that without an examination of what is involved, and the scales proposed, it is extremely difficult to express a view about that, but I am doubtful whether it is relevant. I see that you are about to rise, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. The hon. Gentleman nearly got me into trouble.
On the timing, the proposal is that these changes should take place at the same time as the Insurance changes. We have had experience of what happens when that is not the case. We followed the course, which hon. Members opposite now recommend, in 1955, when the Assistance scales went up in February and the Insurance benefits in April, and some of them in May. There was great confusion and ill-feeling. Assistance scales went up for some weeks and were then reduced when the insurance benefits, in supplemented cases, went up. There was real misunderstanding, misery and frustration and it was the experience of all those then concerned with the operation—I myself was not then in my present office—that where an insurance increase was to be made broadly about the same time as an Assistance increase, there was an overwhelming case for making them coincide.
When to that is added the fact that, as I said in our earlier debates, this is a Measure in substantial degree improving standards, I am sure the right way to do it is to apply this improvement in the standards to the recipient of Assistance at the same time as the Insurance benefits move as one clear cut operation, without putting up Assistance and then reducing it.
That is our view, after studying very carefully and taking the views of those concerned at that time in 1955, and I am convinced that it is the right way. That is the consideration which ought to prevail in this matter and the whole of this considerable operation should


take place at the same time, in the first week in April.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the National Assistance (Determination of Need) Amendment Regulations, 1960, a draft of which was laid before this House on 2nd November, be approved.

ESTATE DUTY (ANGLO-SWEDISH AGREEMENT)

7.53 p.m.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Sir Edward Boyle): I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that, on the ratification by the Government of the Kingdom of Sweden of the Convention set out in the Schedule to the Order entitled the Double Taxation Relief (Estate Duty) (Sweden) Order, 1960, a draft of which was laid before this House on 8th November, an Order may be made in the form of that draft.
This Order ratifies or confirms an Agreement with Sweden, and it is made under Section 77 of the Finance Act, 1948, which provides for double estate duty agreements with other countries to be given statutory effect by Order in Council. I will not say very much about this Order in my opening remarks, but it arises directly out of the difference between the law of Estate Duty in Britain and the Swedish succession duty.
In the case of our Estate Duty, when somebody domiciled in another part of the world dies, Estate Duty is levied on all his property, either moveable or immoveable, which is situated in this country. But in the case of the Swedish succession duty, when a Swedish national dies, or someone domiciled in Sweden dies, the Swedish duty is charged on all his moveable and immoveable property, wherever it is situated. If he is neither Swedish nor domiciled in Sweden, it is none the less charged on his immoveable property in Sweden and also on certain types of moveable property in Sweden. The same item of property may be charged with both British Estate Duty and Swedish succession duty. For example, if a person domiciled in Sweden dies and leaves property situated in Great Britain, the Swedes tax it because he is domiciled in Sweden and we tax it because it is situated here.
It is that problem with which the Agreement seeks to deal. The purpose of the Agreement and the purpose of the Order is to reduce the number of cases where this double taxation occurs, by laying down in Article IV of the Agreement a code of rules for determining the situs of property passing on the death of a person domiciled in Great Britain or Sweden. If the right hon. and learned Member for Newport (Sir F. Soskice) who, I understand, is to speak for the Opposition, has any questions, perhaps I shall be given leave of the House to answer them briefly later.

7.55 p.m.

Sir Frank Soskice: I am grateful to the Financial Secretary for explaining the purpose behind this rather complicated Measure which we are now considering. Speaking for myself, I would say that his proposal is one which we should support. We have to consider no fewer than four of these double taxation agreements this evening and I should like to ask, and perhaps I can conveniently ask while we are considering the first, some general questions which are applicable to all four Orders. Having asked those questions, I should like to ask one or two particular questions which particularly relate to the Order which we are now considering.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Major Sir William Anstruther-Gray): I think that we had better get clear what is convenient to the House. I thought that we were to take this Order first and then the subsequent three together. If the House prefers to take all four together, so be it, but I had thought that to take this Order first and then the other three together would be a better plan.

Sir F. Soskice: I am not sure that that would be very convenient. As I have indicated, I want to ask some general questions which I was proposing, subject to your Ruling, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, to ask when this matter was being considered, and also questions in relation to each of the four Orders, some several questions which relate to each of them separately. I would have thought that it would be better if we took each of the Orders separately.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I am surprised by the right hon. and learned Gentleman's last remark. I thought that he


was going to suggest that we took all four together, and it would then be in order to make any remarks on any of the four Orders during that general discussion of the four. But we must have it one way or the other, according to what is convenient to the House.

Sir F. Soskice: I thought that what you were suggesting, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, was that we should take the first Order first and the other three together What I was suggesting was that it would be more convenient if we took all four separately, as there are separate considerations which arise in relation to each of the four.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: By all means, if that is convenient to the House. Each Order will be taken separately.

Sir F. Soskice: The questions which I wanted to ask with application to each of the four, which are also individually applicable to each, are these. From time to time, we are asked to consider these double taxation Orders, and I think that they serve a very useful purpose. We may differ as to what the scale of taxation should be, but I think that both sides of the House agree that when one is taxed, one should have to pay only one set of taxes on the same form of income or the same form of property. These double taxation Orders are designed to achieve that purpose.
Can the Financial Secretary give some idea of how far these Orders now extend? What countries are now bound by double taxation agreements with this country? Obviously, I do not want much detail, but if the Financial Secretary could give a rough idea of how many of these Orders are in application and what sort of territories are covered and what are now under negotiation. I should be glad of the information.
The second general question which applies to all four Orders and also separately to each—

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I am sorry to interrupt, but it seems to me that the right hon. and learned Member for Newport (Sir F Soskice) is now talking about all four Orders and I understood it to be his wish, and, following that, the wish of the House, that each Order should be

taken separately. It is quite immaterial to the Chair which course is taken, so long as we are clear what our procedure is to be.

Sir F. Soskice: May I make it perfectly clear? I want to speak about each Order separately and to put questions on each separately. I have asked the first question. The second question is how much the provisions of this Order will cost in terms of revenue lost to the Treasury in this country. I should be grateful if the Minister would give some idea of that and indicate subsequently the amount involved with the other Orders, although if he gives an aggregate figure, I shall be perfectly content.
I wanted to call attention to and nut one or two questions on the form of this Order. I should like the Financial Secretary to confirm my impression that the Swedish estate duty is on an entirely different principle from our own. Our own is on what I think is generally referred to as the mutation principle, that is to say, Estate Duty is charged on a passing of an estate, but I believe that I am right in thinking that Swedish Estate Duty is charged on a succession principle.
Thirdly, I believe that a number of persons hold the view that we ought to assimilate our own Estate Duty legislation to the succession principle, but am I right in thinking in the first case that what I have asked is the case, and in the second case that the Order must of necessity be somewhat limited in scope and that all it does is to define the location of property for the purpose of the incidence of potential double tax, and does not seek to achieve any objective other than that limited objective?
Am I right in thinking that normally when there a similar system of Estate Duty in two countries the double taxation order operates by way of affording a credit in one country or another to avoid doable tax and that there is a distinction between this Order and the usual form? Is it possible to extend the scope of the Order beyond its present limited scope?
Those are the only things on which I should like information and, subject to the Financial Secretary being able to give satisfactory answers, I think that we should support the Order.

8.4 p.m.

Sir E. Boyle: By leave of the House; I think that I would be in order in answering the general question of how many double taxation Orders affecting Estate Duty are in operation. We already have double taxation Orders affecting Estate Duty with seven other countries—the United States, Canada, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Switzerland and the Netherlands—and this will make an eighth.
I cannot give the revenue estimate for the effect of the Order, but perhaps I may say that if one takes the whole range of double taxation Orders and considers their effect on the balance of payments, which is the most relevant consideration, I am assured that, so far as we can tell, with credits going into and out of the country, the result leaves the balance of payments approximately all square. That is to say, whereas these double taxation Orders, as the right hon. and learned Member admitted, do greater justice to individuals, in the aggregate they do not greatly affect our balance of payments one way or another.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman was quite right to say that this was an Order different in its effects from most of the others which I have mentioned. That arises directly out of the

fact that, as I tried to explain, there is a difference between our system of Estate Duty and the Swedish system of succession duty. Ours is a mutation duty arising directly out of the fact that property changes hand$, whereas the Swedish duty can be more accurately described by lawyers as an acquisition duty.
As the right hon. and learned Gentleman said, the Order has very limited scope. Article IV prescribes a code of rules for determining the situs of property passing on the death of a person domiciled in Great Britain or Sweden. It is that Article which is the sole purpose of the Order, which covers a narrow point, but which will be none the less valuable for that.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that, on the ratification by the Government of the Kingdom of Sweden of the Convention set out in the Schedule to the Order entitled the Double Taxation Relief (Estate Duty) (Sweden) Order, 1960, a draft of which was laid before this House on 8th November, an Order may be made in the form of that draft.

To be presented by Privy Councillors or Members of Her Majesty's Household.

INCOME TAX (ANGLO-ITALIAN AGREEMENT)

8.5 p.m.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Sir Edward Boyle): I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that, on the ratification by the Government of the Italian Republic of the Convention set out in the Schedule to the Order entitled the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Italy) Order, 1960, a draft of which was laid before this House on 27th July, in the last Session of Parliament, an Order may be made in the form of that draft.
This Order relates to a double taxation Agreement with Italy provided for under Section 347 of the consolidation Measure, the Income Tax Act, 1952. This is the first double taxation Agreement between Britain and Italy. It is absolutely, as it were, in standard form. The former Order was of a rather special form. This Order is based on the draft model Agreement drawn up by the Fiscal Commission of the League of Nations and endorsed by the United Nations Fiscal Commission, and it follows the pattern of Agreements entered into by the United Kingdom since 1945.
About 70 of those Orders have been made to date and I do not think that this Order calls for any special comment from me as it is in absolutely standard form.

8.6 p.m.

Sir Frank Soskice: The Minister anticipated the questions I should like to have put on this Order. As he said, it is in entirely standard form. I suppose that that is possible, because there is broad parity between our system and the Italian system.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that, on the ratification by the Government of the Italian Republic of the Convention set out in the Schedule to the Order entitled the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Italy) Order, 1960, a draft of which was laid before this House on 27th July, in the last Session of Parliament, an Order may be made in the form of that draft.

To be presented by Privy Councillors or Members of Her Majesty's Household.

INCOME TAX (ANGLO-SWEDISH AGREEMENT)

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Sir Edward Boyle): I beg to move,
8.8 p.m.
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that, on the ratification by the Government of the Kingdom of Sweden of the Convention set out in the Schedule to the Order entitled the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Sweden) Order, 1960, a draft of which was laid before this House on 8th November, an Order may be made in the form of that draft.
The double taxation Agreement with Sweden is intended to replace the existing Agreement between the United Kingdom and Sweden which was signed on 30th March, 1949. Whereas, a few moments ago, we were dealing with the first Order made in agreement with Italy, this is a new second Order made with Sweden. It has one important advantage. It is somewhat more extensive in scope than the earlier Agreement of eleven years ago, in particular because it provides that the Swedish communal Income Tax is to be included among the Swedish taxes to which the Order should apply.
We have also taken the opportunity to include some articles in a modified form to bring them into line with articles which the Council of the O.E.E.C. recommended member countries to adopt when revising existing conventions. It makes only minor changes in the existing Agreement, generally in line with the Agreements we have made since 1945.

8.10 p.m.

Sir Frank Soskice: As the Minister has said, the Order that we are now considering relates to the Swedish communal Income Tax. I think that the Minister will be able to confirm that in some respects there is a departure from the norm in this case. In general, I think that the view has been taken in the formulation of these double taxation Agreements that taxes imposed by a constituent entity of a country are not an appropriate subject for double taxation Agreements.
Am I right in thinking that there must be some special consideration applicable in the present case to justify a departure from the normal approach that subordinate taxation, if I may so put it, is not included? I should be grateful if


the hon. Gentleman would tell us whether that is so, and what it is. I presume that it is because the amount of revenue which accrues to the Swedish Treasury from the local taxation system bears a very substantial proportion to the total revenue which comes in by way of taxes to the Swedish Treasury. That, I should have thought, was the principal reason.
I notice also that the Agreement relates to Swedish capital tax. Apparently, Sweden has not got a capital gains tax. I think that it has some sort of graduated tax on the total amount of capital possessions of an individual and imposes a yearly tax upon that total capital possession. I should like to know if that is the reason for the provision in this Agreement relating to Swedish capital tax. I should also like to know from the Minister how that is to operate in view of the fact that we have no equivalent capital tax in this country, nor a capital gains tax, our nearest approach in this respect being Estate Duty.

8.12 p.m.

Sir E. Boyle: I speak again by leave of the House to answer the point made by the right hon. and learned Member. It seems strange that even for a short time, we should discuss a capital tax without the presence of the hon. Member for Gloucester (Mr. Diamond). The capital tax was included in the 1949 Agreement and is not brought in for the first time under the present Agreement. It is an annual progressive tax in Sweden based on the possession or ownership of capital. I am told that capital up to a certain point is tax free and thereafter the annual capital charge operates from a rate just above 1 per cent. and just under 2 per cent.
As under the existing 1949 Agreement there will not be any credit relief given for these taxes against United Kingdom taxes. Such relief from those taxes as is due under the Agreement will have to be given wholly by Sweden. In a

sense this is a one-sided aspect of both double taxation Agreements.
As to the interesting point about the communal tax, it is true that, as the right hon. and learned Member said, we have always taken the view, which I think has been generally accepted throughout the world, that one should not allow, in double taxation Agreements, for taxes levied by subsidiary units of foreign States. On the other hand, it seems quite clear that Swedish local taxes, like those in Norway, are used to meet expenditure which in this country would be met by the Exchequer. It ill becomes any of us in any part of the world to be doctrinaire about where such taxes begin and end.
When one thinks of the general grant and the relation between central taxes and rates in this country, which is our normal practice for all kinds of reasons, it seems right to include these taxes, even though administered by different authorities, if they are used to meet expenditure which would be met here by the Exchequer. Considered under this head, it seems that the Swedish communal tax qualifies, and the Royal Commission on the Taxation of Profits and Income recommended that
The test of recognition for double taxation purposes should depend solely on the nature of the tax and not upon the status of the authority imposing and administering it.
I think that this is perfectly within that definition, and it is common sense to have brought this communal tax within the scope of this Order.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that, on the ratification by the Government of the Kingdom of Sweden of the Convention set out in the Schedule to the Order entitled the Double Taxation Relief (Taxes on Income) (Sweden) Order, 1960, a draft of which was laid before this House on 8th November, an Order may be made in the form of that draft.

To be presented by Privy Councillors or Members of Her Majesty's Household.

TAX RELIEF (ANGLO-IRANIAN AIR TRANSPORT PROFITS)

8.15 p.m.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Sir Edward Boyle): I beg to move,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Double Taxation Relief (Air Transport Profits) (Iran) Order, 1960, be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on 8th November.
I now come to the double taxation Agreement with Iran. This is not a general Agreement such as the Agreement with Italy, or the replacement of the general Agreement with Sweden. This is a purely limited Agreement, which applies only to profits from air transport. So far, we have not been able to negotiate a double taxation Agreement with Iran covering a wider field than this. As I say, it is a limited Agreement applying to profits from air transport, and as such I commend it to the House.

8.16 p.m.

Sir Frank Soskice: This seems to be a rather odd departure. I should be grateful if the Minister would tell me whether I am right in supposing that it enables air transport undertakings operating in the two countries to escape the possible incidence of double taxation. If that is the case, as I understand it is from the terms of the Order, and what the Minister has said, can he tell us whether we have precedents for this entirely piecemeal kind of double taxation provision?
If we are to start with air transport undertakings do we go on to other similar private undertakings operating in the two countries? If we do that I can foresee that we shall get into a considerable muddle and in countries like Iran we may have a whole plethora of separate double taxation Agreements which will induce a greater degree of confusion in what is already a confused area of our activities. I should be grateful if the right hon. Gentleman can tell us what the Government intend in this respect.
I do not say that it is unnecessary for the Government to make this Order. I am not opposing it, but asking where it is leading us. Are there precedents for

this very piecemeal type of double taxation provision? Are similar agreements in force with other countries in the Middle East or elsewhere, and what are the intentions of the Government in regard to a proliferation of similar Orders with that country and others in the Middle East?

8.18 p.m.

Sir E. Boyle: I speak again by leave of the House. In answer to the right hon. and learned Member, his account of what the Order does is perfectly correct. This is not absolutely unique. In the past, we have negotiated limited Agreements with other countries on a number of occasions. For example, an Agreement was made in 1949 with Argentina which was limited to shipping and air transport profits, and there was a similar limited Agreement in 1951 with Greece which covered only air transport profits. The Agreement with Greece was superseded later by a more comprehensive Agreement.
We have never had, as it were, more than one double taxation Agreement with one country at one time, and as soon as we can widen the scope of this Agreement we shall do so. The work on these Agreements goes on unceasingly all the time. Quite obviously, that is necessary because of countries in Africa becoming independent, and a great deal of work needs to be done there. I think I am in order in saying that only very recently we managed to negotiate a new Agreement with Pakistan to replace the old Agreement which Pakistan terminated. I think that the answer to the right hon. and learned Member is that all the time we shall be searching for means of widening the scope of these Orders, but very often this is a case of "c'est le premier pas qui coûte". We want to start for a limited purpose and then to widen the scope if we can gain wider agreement in the years to come.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Double Taxation Relief (Air Transport Profits) (Iran) Order, 1960, be made in the form of the draft laid before this House on 8th November.

To be presented by Privy Councillors or Members of Her Majesty's Household.

Orders of the Day — RATING AND VALUATION [MONEY]

Resolution reported,
That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to amend the law with respect to the valuation of property for rating purposes and with respect to rates, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament—

(a) of any increase attributable to that Act in the sums payable out of such moneys under any enactment;
(b) of any expenses incurred by valuation officers in carrying out their functions under the said Act of the present Session (including the remuneration and expenses of persons employed to assist valuation officers).

Resolution agreed to.

Orders of the Day — LOCAL AUTHORITIES (EXPENDITURE ON SPECIAL PURPOSES) (SCOTLAND) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question put (pursuant to Standing Order No. 60 (Public Bills relating exclusively to Scotland)), That the Bill be committed to the Scottish Standing Committee.—[Mr. Maclay.]

Question agreed to.

Bill (deemed to have been read a Second time) committed to the Scottish Standing Committee.

Orders of the Day — LOCAL AUTHORITIES (EXPENDITURE ON SPECIAL PURPOSES) (SCOTLAND) [MONEY]

[Queen's Recommendation signified.]

Considered in Committee under Standing Order No. 84 (Money Committees).

[Major Sir WILLIAM ANSTRUTHER-GRAY in the Chair]

Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act of this Session to amend section three hundred and thirty-nine of the Local Government (Scotland) Act, 1947, with respect to the purposes for which payments may be made thereunder, it is expedient to authorise any increase attributable to the said Act of this Session in the sums payable out of moneys provided by Parliament by way of Exchequer Equalisation Grant under the enactments relating to local government in Scotland.—[Mr. Galbraith.]

Resolution to be reported.

Report to be received Tomorrow.

Orders of the Day — STREET TRADERS, MANCHESTER (PROSECUTIONS)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Noble.]

8.22 p.m.

Mr. F. Blackburn: I should like, first, to say to the Solicitor-General how sorry I am that this debate is taking place at what, I know, is a most inconvenient hour for him. I assure him that I am not responsible. I have been waiting here for over three hours, because I did not know what time the previous debate would be concluded.
The Attorney-General came into the case which I am raising when he instituted proceedings in the High Court and later in the Count of Appeal, but it will be necessary for me to outline the events prior to his intervention, not because he has any responsibility for actions taken by the Manchester City Corporation but because I want to know whether he was aware of certain details of the case when he made his decision.
First, I should like to say this. I think that for all of us it is an accepted principle that, as between one citizen and another, not only must justice be done but that it must seem to be done, and if the law is invoked it should be against all known offenders without discrimination.
I am raising tonight the case of two of my constituents, Mr. and Mrs. Harris who, I believe, have been subject to unfair discrimination. I frankly admit that they have on numerous occasions offended against Section 12 of the Manchester Police Regulations Act, 1844, but so have hundreds of other people in Manchester, as I shall later seek to show, yet it is only my constituents who have been proceeded against. As a Member of this House it would be wrong of me to give the impression that I was condoning a breach of the law; it would be equally wrong of me to remain silent when I believe that my constituents have been subject to unfair discrimination.
What would be thought if we revived the old law which imposed a fine on Members of Parliament for nonattendance—a law which, I believe, has never been repealed—and applied it to


only two Members and ignored the other 628? Or if in only one or two cases prosecutions were instituted under the law of Elizabeth I which imposed a fine of 1s. for non-attendance at church? I admit that I have gone far into the past for my examples, certainly further than 1844, but they illustrate the point that I am trying to make.
Let me come to this specific case. Early in 1955, Mr. and Mrs. Harris started selling flowers on Sundays outside one of the entrances of Southern Cemetery, Manchester. I should say here that they secured a licence granted by the Manchester Corporation. Where they took their stand, the pavement is 15 or 16 feet wide and they erected their stall against the cemetery railings. It did not project as far as the trees which are growing at intervals along the footway, and, therefore, they could not be said to be impeding the passage of pedestrians. In the vicinity of Southern Cemetery there are three florists' shops which must be open on Sundays, one about 400 yards away from where my constituents had their stall, another about 600 yards away and a third about 900 yards away.
I assumed that my constituents, Mr. and Mrs. Harris, found their venture profitable, and after a time complaints were made to the city council on behalf of the florists about unfair competition, though it should be noted that it was not for this that my constituents were later prosecuted.
In February, 1956, the first of a large number of prosecutions was instituted against Mr. and Mrs. Harris under Section 102. The maximum fine under the Act was £2 and on 22 of the occasions, the magistrates imposed a fine of 2s. 6d. The Manchester Corporation then approached the Attorney-General and he initiated proceedings in the High Court, which were heard before Mr. Justice Salmon. He found for Mr. and Mrs. Harris. I should like to read the concluding words of the summing up of Mr. Justice Salmon, as I think they are very relevant:
Undoubtedly it is only in the most exceptional circumstances that any statutory provision can be contravened without public injury. The circumstances of this case are, however, most exceptional. The acts done by the defendants do not on the very special facts of

this case tend to injure the public, and indeed I am completely satisfied that no member of the public has been in the slightest degree inconvenienced by the defendants. I am uneasy, too, about the circumstances in which the prosecutions were originally launched. I do not consider that in all the circumstances of this case, an injunction should be granted, and in the exercise at my discretion I refuse an injunction.
The case was then taken by the Attorney-General to the Court of Appeal and Lord Justice Sellars, Lord Justice Pearce and Lord Justice Devlin reversed the ruling of Mr. Justice Salmon and granted an injunction against Mr. and Mrs. Harris. Far be it from me to try to interpret between learned judges and the rest of us. My constituents are now in the position that they have a hawker's licence by the Manchester City Corporation which, if they fail to use it for six months, will be taken away from them, and if they do use it they are liable to imprisonment.
I shall now have to go into more details about the case, because I should like to know whether the Attorney-General was aware of all its aspects when he instituted proceedings in the High Court. Was he aware, for instance, that the proceedings appeared to have relation only to a site outside Southern Cemetery? Was he aware that hundreds of other people were prima facie, guilty under Section 102 of the Manchester Police Regulations Act of 1844?
I should like to go back to the period before the prosecution started and to quote certain words of Mr. Justice Salmon. He said:
It appears from the letters of the Town Clerk in the agreed correspondence that after the practice … had been going on for many months and had been observed and reported on by the police and by the City Surveyor and Engineer, the unanimous conclusion was reached by the police, the Highways Committee and the Town Clerk that no action could justifiably be taken against the defendants …
I should like to read sections of that agreed correspondence, because it is very relevant to the case which I am trying to make. As I said earlier, my constituents started this trading early in 1955. The first letter which I shall read is dated 21st October, 1955, and it is to a certain Councillor Bailey of Manchester, beginning
Street Trading. Corner of Barlow Moor Road and Princess Road.


It continues:
You called to see me some little time ago to inquire about the gentleman from Dukinfield"—
that is my constituent—
who comes in a lorry every Sunday morning, parks his lorry in the road and then proceeds to sell flowers, and I believe fruit from the footpath. As promised I have made inquiries and I find that Councillor Donovan has been complaining about this practice since April of this year. The position is that the police have kept observation and they report that there is no obstruction to the highway and if this is so, of course, the case is not one which concerns them. But there is a section in the old Highway Act of 1835 and it might be possible for the Highways Committee to take proceedings, and at the request of Councillor Donovan the City Surveyor took observations at the corner of these two roads on Sunday, 4th September, and submitted a report to the Highways Committee at their meeting on 21st September and the Committee decided to take no action. In these circumstances I regret that there is nothing further that I can do.
The next letter is that of 28th November, 1955, to Mr. Boan, one of the florists:
Thank you for your letter of 26th November which I received today. The activities of which you complain have been the subject of observations by the police and by the City Surveyor and Engineer. They have also been the subject of a report to the Highways Committee as a result of which that Committee came to the conclusion that there was no action which they could justifiably recommend the Council to take; that being so, I am afraid I do not know of any way in which I can help you in the matter.
Finally, there is a letter of 13th January, 1956, again to a florist:
The Lord Mayor has consulted me about the letter which you wrote to him on 10th January and I have advised him that there is no action which he can take in the matter. He has asked me to write and inform you of this.
That was in January, but there was still further pressure, and in February the prosecutions were instituted, not on the ground of unfair competition but under Section 102 of the 1844 Act. This is a compendious Section creating several hundred petty offences. Lord Justice Sellers quoted the relevant parts of this Section, and it is important that I should quote them because I want to know whether the Attorney-General was aware of the very wide range of offences which are quoted under this Section and how many hundreds of people in Manchester must be guilty of offending against Section 102 of the 1844 Act. These are the relevant passages:

. . every Person shall be liable to a Penalty of not more than Forty Shillings, who in any Street shall commit any of the following Offences;
Every Person who shall place or leave any Furniture, Goods, Wares, or Merahandize, or any Oask, Tub, Basket, Pail, or Bucket, or other Article whatsoever, or place or use any Standing Place, Stool, Bench, Stall, or Show-board on any Footway …
Every person who shall place, hang up, or otherwise expose to sale any Goods, Wares, Merohandize, Matter, or Thing whatsoever, so that the same shall project into or over any Footway or Area, or beyond the Line of any House, Shop, or Building at which the same shall be so exposed;
Every person who shall slide upon any Footway, or by standing, loitering, or remaining together with other Persons on any Footway without reasonable Cause, or by hawking or exposing for sale any Shell or other Fish, Greengrocery, Meat, or other Article, on or near any Footway, or by any other Means shall obstruct or incommode the free Passage of any such Footway, or who shall insult, jostle, or annoy any Inhabitant or Passenger;
It will be seen, therefore, that every barrow boy, every person who offers flowers for sale outside a cemetery or a hospital in Manchester—and I can assure the House that there are quite a number of them—and every shopkeeper who, on the pavement outside his shop, exposes goods for sale is committing an offence under Section 102, yet only my constituents, Mr. and Mrs. Harris, are prosecuted. Why?
I have here a number of photographs, one showing the pitch were Mr. and Mrs. Harris had their stall, one showing litter outside one of the florist's shops, one showing goods exposed for sale on the pavement outside a shop in Oxford Street and another showing motor cars for sale on the pavement outside premises in Downing Street, both the last two cases being in the heart of the city. Anyone who knows Manchester knows that many examples could be found of shopkeepers using the public pavement to display their wares.
It is interesting to note that in the photograph showing cars for sale a policeman is standing happily oblivious of the commission of an offence 2 ft. behind him. Not only are many shopkeepers infringing the law but fruit and flower sellers and many other traders have their barrows and stalls on the streets within the city and often in the most congested parts of it.
Was the Attorney-General aware that hundreds of others were infringing the very law under which my constituents were prosecuted? Was he aware that this was a case if not of victimisation at least of discrimination? Justice has not been done as between one citizen and another. Admittedly, Mr. and Mrs. Harris have broken this law of 1844, but so have hundreds of others, and so are hundreds of others continuing to break it at the present time. It seems to me wrong that my constituents alone should be pilloried and penalised with the harsh terms of the injunction. It is probably true to say that if there had not been in the vicinity florists shops concerned about competition the prosecutions would never have been started.
It is not for me tonight to try to suggest a solution—I should probably be out of order if I tried to do so—but I felt that I owed a duty to my constituents to call attention to what I consider are these acts of unfair discrimination.

8.37 p.m.

Mr. Eric Johnson: I apologise to the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Blackburn) for not being here at the beginning of his speech. However, I told him the other day that I had a certain interest in this matter, as Mr. Harris came to see me about it last week. I think that he has been trying to interest various hon. Members representing Manchester constituencies in his case.
I have a good deal of sympathy with Mr. Harris. I have not the same detailed knowledge of the subject as has the hon. Gentleman and I can only repeat what he said. It seems a most extraordinary state of affairs that Mr. Harris will lose his licence to trade if he does not make use of it for six months, and, if he does make use of it, he goes to prison. I can corroborate what the hon. Gentleman has said about what is going on in Manchester now. It seems all the more extraordinary when one can see—

The Solicitor-General (Sir Jocelyn Simon): On a point of order, Mr. Deputy-Speaker. I am sure that it will be appreciated that I am not responsible in any way for anything that the Manchester Corporation does or does not do. I am solely responsible for the Attorney-General's action in this relator case to which the hon. Member for Stalybridge

and Hyde (Mr. Blackburn) referred. In those circumstances I do not know how far my hon. Friend can go.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Major Sir William Anstruther-Gray): I am sure that the House will take note of what the Solicitor-General has said.

Mr. Johnson: I have no wish to exceed the bounds of order. I only wish to corroborate what the hon. Gentleman has said.
Mr. Harris has only been doing what a great many other people are doing now every day, apparently, without risking imprisonment. I hope that some means can be found by my hon. and learned Friend to do something to help Mr. Harris. He has been vary hardly used over this, and has been brought almost to a state of bankruptcy. As I feel very sorry indeed for him, I sought this opportunity to say a few words in support of the hon. Gentleman.

8.41 p.m.

The Solicitor-General (Sir Jocelyn Simon): The House will appreciate that I am not concerned, nor was my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General, in any way with the prosecutions undertaken by the Manchester Corporation against Mr. and Mrs. Harris, or with the Corporation's alleged failure to prosecute others who may have been breaking the law. As to that, I know nothing. What I have to justify to the House is such action as my right hon. and learned Friend has taken in this matter.
Hon. Members will know that where the penalties imposed by a statute have proved inadequate to secure compliance with its provisions—to secure compliance, in other words, with the provisions that Parliament has laid down—the High Court will grant an injunction to secure that compliance. The result is that infringements of the statute are thereafter liable to be punished as contempts of court.
It is also established law, as hon. Gentlemen know, that an injunction of this kind can be granted only in proceedings which are in form an action at the suit of the Attorney-General. That is to give a certain control over the enforcement of a statute in the event of


non-compliance. I emphasise the words "in form", because the Attorney-General is the nominal plaintiff in the action, but, in reality, the action is brought by the complainant, although certainly with the consent and subject to the control of the Attorney-General if he wishes to intervene. In other words, if the complainant seeks the leave of the Attorney-General to institute proceedings in his name, and if he obtains that consent, he thereafter conducts the proceedings himself and is liable for his own costs.
My right hon. and learned Friend first knew of the case of Mr. and Mrs. Harris on 1st July, 1958, when it was referred to him by the Town Clerk of Manchester. The evidence then before my right hon. and learned Friend was that during the preceding two years Mr. Harris had been convicted of 74 offences, and Mrs. Harris of 34 offences, against the section of the Manchester Police Regulation Act to which the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Blackburn) referred. As the House has been told, those offences took place in connection with the setting up of stalls for the sale of flowers in such a manner as
… to incommode the free passage of …
the
footway . .
In answer to the hon. Gentleman, I would say, in the first place, that that was the only case that was brought to the notice of my right hon. and learned Friend. Secondly, as to whether he knew all the facts at the time, I thought that it might be helpful if I cited a sentence from the judgment of Lord Justice Pearce in the Court of Appeal, when he said:
When the Attorney-General decides to bring the action, he has not heard both sides of the matter and he has perforce to exercise his discretion ex parte. It is for the court to hear both sides and, having done so, to exercise its own discretion.
That is a matter of common sense which flows inevitably from the position of the Attorney-General in these cases, as I have described.

Mr. Charles Pannell: I understand the gravamen of the charge brought by my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr.

Blackburn) to be that there has been discrimination in this case. In effect, Mr. and Mrs. Harris have been discriminated against under an old law. Before the hon. and learned Gentleman leaves the case, I hope that he will be able to prove to us that Mr. and Mrs. Harris have been dealt with in equity with other offenders.

The Solicitor-General: All I am concerned with is that there has been no discrimination by my right hon. and learned Friend. I can assure the hon. Member and the House of that. But if I can keep within the rules of order in doing so, I will revert to the point to which the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde and the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. C. Pannell) have referred.
The third question that the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde asked was whether my right hon. and learned Friend knew of the terms of the Section. The answer, of course, is that he did. My right hon. and learned Friend, on the information before him, granted his consent to the institution of proceedings in his name; and the hon. Member kindly made it plain that he has no criticism of my right hon. and learned Friend for doing so on the material before him, as was justified by the subsequent course of the action.
The action then proceeded in the ordinary way without any reference to my right hon. and learned Friend. Mr. Justice Salmon, who tried the case, heard all the evidence and reserved his judgment. In doing so, he gave instructions that the Manchester Corporation should send to my right hon. and learned Friend the correspondence to which the hon. Member has referred and which had been in evidence in the action. My right hon. and learned Friend received it on 23rd March.
The correspondence showed that the prosecutions of Mr. and Mrs. Harris had been brought, not out of a public-spirited desire to prevent obstruction of the highway, but in response to the complaints of rival florists in Manchester. The hon. Member was, I think, quite right in the inference and the picture he drew from that correspondence.
When judgment was given in the case—the hon. Member has read the passage—it became apparent that the judge


attached some weight to that fact. My right hon. and learned Friend, however, did not consider that it called for any action on his part at the time, and this decision was justified by the subsequent history Of the case.
On 4th May, 1959, the learned judge gave judgment for the defendants, the hon. Member's constituents—that is to say, he refused to grant the injunction which had been sought. On 12th June last year, the Manchester Corporation sought my right hon. and learned Friend's consent to an appeal being brought against the judgment. After considering the facts of the case, the terms of the judgment and the law relating to proceedings of this nature, my right hon. and learned Friend on 17th June gave his consent to an appeal being brought. Again, the hon. Member made it clear that he had no criticism of my right hon. and learned Friend's decision in that connection, which was, as I have suggested, soon to be significantly vindicated. That appeal came before the Court of Appeal on 16th June this year, and on 18th July judgment was given allowing the appeal and granting the injunction restraining Mr. and Mrs. Harris, in effect, from committing further offences against Section 102 of the Manchester Police Regulation Act.
It is right that I should tell the House that the matter has come before my right hon. and learned Friend on one further occasion since then. That was in August this year, when evidence was supplied to him that Mr. and Mrs. Harris had been acting in breach of the injunction and an application was made for his consent to take proceedings to enforce it against them. He gave his consent and the application was made to the Vacation Judge to commit Mr. and Mrs. Harris for contempt. Those proceedings were adjourned, the judge taking the view that, although Mr. and Mrs. Harris were in contempt, their contempt was not wilful. That is where the matter stands at the moment.
I have mentioned that it is no part of my duty to defend the Manchester Corporation or the motives that may have inspired the Corporation's action. As, however, the Corporation has no representative here to defend it, I might make three general observations. First, it is by no means uncommon for the

machinery of the criminal law to be invoked for purely selfish reasons. I do not say that it has been invoked for selfish reasons; I only say that it is not uncommon for the criminal law—and, indeed, the civil law—to be invoked for ulterior purposes.
Secondly, the fact that other people may have been guilty of similar offences—as to which I know nothing except what I have heard from the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde and from my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. E. Johnson)—is no reason for refraining from taking proceedings and for not enforcing the law against Mr. and Mrs. Harris, who on their own showing have been guilty of numerous and deliberate infringements of the law as laid down by Parliament.
Finally, the High Court having granted an injunction, it seems to me to be the duty of the Manchester Corporation to enforce it.
I now turn to my real task—that is, to say why my right hon. and learned Friend took the action which he did and which, as I say, has been justified by the decision of the Court of Appeal. The principles on which the Attorney-General should act in cases like this have been laid down by the courts on many occasions, and perhaps the House will bear with me if I quote a very short passage from a judgment by Mr. Justice Eve in 1931 which was cited with approval in the Court of Appeal in this case. He said:
The public is concerned in seeing that Acts of Parliament are obeyed, and if those who are acting in breach of them persist in so doing, notwithstanding the infliction of the punishment prescribed by the Act, the public at large is sufficiently interested in the dispute to warrant the Attorney-General intervening for the purpose of asserting public rights, and if he does so the general rule no longer operates; the dispute is no longer one between individuals, it is one between the public and a small section of the public refusing to abide by the law of the land.
In exercising his function the Attorney-General is not really in the position of a private litigant who can choose at will whether or not he will enforce his rights. Still less is he acting as an agent of the Government. He represents the public, and his sole concern in a case of this sort is, in the words I have just quote,
in seeing that Acts of Parliament are obeyed …


That is the only consideration, as I am sure the House will appreciate, which has moved my right hon. and learned Friend in this matter, and it is the only consideration which ought to move him. I am sure that the House will agree that, once the High Court has granted an injunction, my right hon. and learned Friend is, if evidence is put before him that the Order has been infringed, bound to give his consent to the institution of proceeding in his name to enforce it.
So far as his consent to the original institution and prosecution of the proceedings is concerned, I do not think it will be disputed that my right hon and learned Friend was justified in his view that only a High Court injunction would suffice to secure compliance with the law, so that it was not merely his right but his duty to give his consent to the proceedings. That view was conclusively vindicated by the decision of the Court of Appeal.
In conclusion, the Court of Appeal, even if it finds the facts proved, is not bound to grant an injunction. It still has a discretion not to grant the remedy sought. But in this case the Court of Appeal thought that there was a case for granting the injunction. On those facts, I ask the House to say that it is quite plain that my right hon. and learned Friend's actions, with which alone we are concerned today, were justified.

Orders of the Day — HOSIPTAL SERVICES, WEST OF SCOTLAND

8.56 p.m.

Mr. Cyril Bence: Coming from a Scottish constituency, I am pleased to say that, although from time to time Scottish Members get into difficulties with the Lord Advocate, I have never known any of my hon. Friends to be faced by him with a proposition such as that which has been put to my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Blackburn) tonight. I have never heard anything like it. The Scots would never stand for it.
I have notified the Secretary of State for Scotland of the matter which I wish to raise tonight. I am pleased to see the Joint Under-Secretary of State present. Scottish Members are conscious of the importance of Scottish problems and issues in this House. I wish to raise a serious problem which arises in a very important burgh in Scotland, Clydebank. In that burgh there are some very prominent industries. There is one of the finest shipbuilding yards in the world, John Brown & Co. Ltd. There is also the Singer Sewing Machine Company, which is an American subsidiary, and several other industries. The population of over 50,000 is made up almost entirely of working-class people. Nearly all of the thousands of houses in Clydebank are of three or four rooms. It is a burgh of artisan type houses. Very few families live in big houses. There is a large proportion of young people.
In spite of the large population, there are no maternity hospital facilities. I understand that the hospital at Overton in Dunbarton is to close. I believe that it was established by a famous Glasgow chemical manufacturer by the name of White. He built it as his private residence. He employed women and girls in his factory, where I understand that the expectation of life was about twelve years. The workers used to die of phosphorus jaw. It is appropriate that in the 20th century his house should be used as a maternity hospital to bring children into the world.
As I have said, this maternity hospital is to close, and the mothers of Clydebank will have to go to the Vale of Leven. That is about 20 miles from


Clydebank. The other alternative is to go into Glasgow. In Clydebank we feel that we should have a hospital service if not in the burgh at least on the doorstep. With respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, West (Mr. Steele), Dumbarton is a very pleasant town but it is not so important industrially as Clydebank.

Mr. Thomas Steele: Oh, no.

Mr. Bence: My hon. Friend will not accept that, but that is how we in Clydebank feel We think that we are entitled to more hospital services in the burgh.
I feel that there ought to be a general hospital service in or nearer to the burgh than the service provided in Glasgow. We tried to run a voluntary service in Clydebank by co-operating with the owners of motor cars who agreed to take people to hospital in Glasgow or to the Vale of Leven when no ambulance service was available. Now we have an ambulance service; but more than that, if the motor car owners or their wives volunteer to drive, we can get patients taken to the Western Infirmary when an ambulance cannot be obtained.
Although the Western Regional Hospital Board has given assurances that it intends to provide additional services to cover the burgh, so far as we can see these hospitals will be well out into the county and we shall still have to take patients to Glasgow. There is a hospital at Hardgate which was used for tuberculosis patients and I am wondering whether it could be converted into a maternity hospital. I do not know what is the situation, but I make that suggestion.
It was only about an hour ago that I had it in mind to raise this matter, as the opportunity had occurred. Having spent ten years in Scotland, I have learned from the Scots to watch the situation and to take advantage of the English whenever I can. I thank my hon. Friends for their tuition and I make no apology for raising this matter tonight. There is nothing like acquiring virtues from the people among whom one lives, especially if they are good virtues. So I have taken the opportunity to raise what to Clydebank is a very important matter.
There is another complaint in Clydebank about clinical facilities. I understand that such facilities are under the control of the town council. I am told that there is one pre-natal clinic in Clydebank where the waiting-room accommodation is so shocking that young expectant mothers will not go there. In such a burgh as Clydebank where so much is being done in other directions I think that the Department of Health should put some punch and drive into the effort to bring up to date the general amenities and clinical facilities of the hospitals.
In many ways the town council has done excellent work, for example, in welfare facilities for old people, and I have no doubt that in 1961 or 1962 it will be prepared to do a great deal more for the welfare of the burgh provided that it is not further impoverished by the operation of certain financial provisions and the new rating and valuation legislation.
But with the operation of the present Administration, and with the passage of legislation relating to financial provisions in Scotland and the rating and valuation legislation, it may be that the council will be somewhat inhibited about what it may plunge into during the coming years. There is also to be considered the operation of the block grant system, and the fear of loss of funds through the equalisation grant operations which worries the council. It seems a shame that we should have so much which is progressive in a burgh like Clydebank while at the same time, because of the fear of all sorts of things, progress is prevented in the way of providing such things as hospital services.
This is particularly the case in a burgh where we have one of the finest shipyards in the world, a shipyard that has built the biggest liners in the world, and which is in a position today, immediately the Government give the word, to build another of the finest liners in the world. We also have the Singer Sewing Machine Company, with a very large plant, which contributes immensely to the British export trade, and which has a very large employment roll of young women machine operators, who are all liable to minor accidents, and with no hospital in the vicinity.
I ask the hon. Gentleman to give consideration to some of the points I have raised, and I hope that many of my hon. Friends will deal with the problems with which their own localities are faced. I also hope that the Joint Under-Secretary will in due course see if he can put some punch into the expansion of hospitals for industrial burghs in Scotland.

9.17 p.m.

Mr. William Ross: We are indeed grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) for his quickness in seizing and using an opportunity to put forward a matter that has been concerning the people of his burgh.
I am surprised, indeed I am a bit alarmed, to hear this news that there is a possibility of the closure of this maternity hospital accommodation so that these people will have to be taken to Glasgow. I had been led to believe from a debate in the House that there was considerable concern about the shortage of maternity hospital accommodation in Glasgow, and yet we are faced with this new demand on this already limited service, which is not likely to be very easy of solution. I can well appreciate my hon. Friend's concern. There are certain things happening in the hospital world and through the regional hospital boards which are causing concern in the part of the world which I represent.
I am going to take the Joint Under-Secretary a wee bit nearer home—to Ballochmyle Hospital. I do not think we could take the hon. Gentleman much nearer his own home than that. Concern has been expressed in the West of Scotland, and particularly in Ayrshire, because here we have a hospital sited right on the edge of a coal field, a hospital which has built up a tremendous reputation, and which deals with the accidents and casualties Which inevitably happen in an area like that. It is right there on the spot to deal with them. Now we are faced with the possibility of the casualty ward of Ballochmyle Hospital being closed. This means that if there is any accident in the mining areas, and I am not talking of disasters, but the day-to-day kind of accidents that happen there, the injured miner will have to be taken along a road, past a hospital, eight

or ten miles to Glasgow Infirmary. Nobody is satisfied, certainly not the miners of Ayrshire, that this is wise in the circumstances, and I hope that the Joint Under-Secretary will be able to tell me something about it. I have sent him a letter on this matter, so it should not come exactly as a surprise to him.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Major Sir William Anstruther-Gray): Order. The hon. Member mentions the matter of surprise. I should like to say that I called the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) on the understanding that he had given notice to the Department of the particular subject which he was going to raise, and that the Department was prepared to reply to it, and that I believe to be the case. If the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) raises a different subject, it would not be fair to expect the Department to be armed with a reply, unless he has given due notice, but he is quite in order in speaking on the Motion for the Adjournment.

Mr. Ross: I was just waiting to hear the last three words, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, because I was quite well aware of that fact. I am in order. I am raising a point, and I am bringing it to the notice of the Minister. He has already been made aware of the matter by letter and I am using this opportunity to reinforce and bring once more to his notice a matter that concerns that part of the country. If the Joint Under-Secretary wants another matter to worry him about hospitals, I am perfectly sure that if my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes) were here he would be developing a case for a maternity service in the area of Catrine and Mauchline.
I want the Joint Under-Secretary to appreciate the importance that it attached by miners and others who live in the area to the question of closing the casualty ward at this hospital. I do not want to labour the point, because the hon. Gentleman knows the area and knows what I am saying is true about the facilities that might be required right away in order to save a life. Indeed, the extension of that journey from the scene of the accident to an available hospital might be a matter of life or death. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will interest himself in this and if possible


have the decision changed and that, whatever rearrangements may have to be made in the regional board's facilities, the casualty ward will be retained.

9.11 p.m.

Mr. William Small: I wish to take the opportunity, and I have already advised the Joint Under-Secretary of the matter, to raise an issue which affects my constituency—

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. T. G. D. Galbraith): On a point of order. I understood that two separate subjects were to be raised on two separate Motions for the Adjournment and I think that the hon. Member for Glasgow, Scotstoun (Mr. Small) is moving on to the second subject to which my right hon. Friend intended to reply.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: There is, of course, only one Adjournment Motion, but we can certainly take it piecemeal if that is for the convenience of the House, but hon. Members can speak only once on the Question, "That this House do now adjourn". The hon. Member for Scotstoun has the Floor.

Mr. Small: I will leave the matter till later.

Mr. Thomas Fraser: On a point of order. If my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Scotstoun (Mr. Small), who had already risen after being called and had started to speak, now in deference to a point raised by the Joint Under-Secretary resumes his seat, will he be able to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, or is it possible for you to call him later in the debate on the Question, "That this House do now adjourn"? I am seeking to protect my hon. Friend's rights.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: I fully appreciate the position. As I see it, it would be within the power of the House to grant leave for an hon. Member to speak again, but, of course, if somebody objects to that there is nothing that the Chair can do.

9.15 p.m.

Mr. Thomas Steele: I am very glad that this opportunity has been given to me to speak in a debate which was started by my hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence). We are very

fortunate in West Dunbartonshire in that we have the only new hospital which has been built in Scotland since the end of the war. It was built not by the regional board, but under Civil Defence arrangements for dealing with casualities from Glasgow and the surrounding areas. I have raised this matter in the House on a number of occasions. The first time I did so was because we had a hospital which was beautifully furnished and fully equipped down to the last bedpan but we did not have a patient. It was standing there unused while people in the West of Scotland were crying out for hospital accommodation and for hospital beds.
It was finally agreed that it should be used, and it is now proving a wonderful benefit to the people in my area and also to those who live in East Dunbartonshire. If we had not been successful in getting this hospital used in this way, my colleagues would by this time have had a hospital in Clydebank. For some time I have been in touch with the Minister about this hospital. It was built for Civil Defence purposes and the amenities are not those which are necessary for it to be used as a general hospital. It has, however, now become a general hospital dealing with many out-patients, and the facilities and amenities are inadequate.
I have already discussed this with the Scottish Office. The predecessor of the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland visited the hospital, and I discussed the matter with him there. It is generally agreed that something ought to be done, but so far nothing has been done. The hospital has no real facilities for dealing with out-patients. It seems rather odd that we should have this wonderful new hospital which is proving a boon and a benefit to my constituents and others who have to stay in hospital, yet there are not adequate facilities to deal with the out-patients.
I have pleaded with the Minister to get something done about this, but so far without success. I should like the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland to give us an assurance that he will give his personal attention to this matter and will try to do something which is badly needed for the benefit of those who are treated as out-patients.

9.18 p.m.

Mr. William Hannan: I wish to add a sentence or two to the case being made to the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland regarding the health services, and to mention in particular the need for more maternity beds in Glasgow.
On 15th November, 1960, I asked the Secretary of State for Scotland what progress was being made in the provision of these beds in order to overcome the gap between what the Montgomery Report said was necessary in Glasgow and the actual situation. The Joint Under-Secretary replied:
The regional hospital board expects to open 90 additional beds next year"—
I presume that is 1961—
and is continuing to explore"—
may I interpolate that I almost expected the words "every avenue"—
other possibilities of providing additional beds urgently, in advance of the completion of the new Yorkhill Maternity Hospital."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, Tuesday, 15th November, 1960; Vol. 630, c. 19.]
These facts were known to the Department a year ago when my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Gorbals (Mrs. Cullen) and I spoke in an Adjournment debate drawing attention to this grave disparity.
Since then, the medical officer of health for Glasgow has issued his annual report in which he says:
The outstanding weakness in Glasgow is the deficiency in maternity hospital accommodation. The Committee on Health and Welfare have continued to urge the Government and the Regional Hospital Board, and plans have been formulated by the Board for new maternity hospitals and for the provision of maternity beds in existing hospitals.
The Under-Secretary must pay close attention to the next sentence:
Up to date not one additional bed has been provided, although some 90 beds are due to be available within a period of six months.
In spite of the Under-Secretary's reply to the Adjournment debate of a year ago, not a single bed has been provided.
That is not worthy of the society in which we live. If this is an affluent society, if we have never had it so good, then there are many anxious mothers and fathers-to-be who are most concerned about the lack of maternity hospital accommodation in Glasgow. Will the

Under-Secretary make a further statement on this matter? It is simply not good enough that he should ride away on phrases about every avenue being explored and every attempt being made. Of the four cities in Scotland, Glasgow's provision of maternity beds is the worst.

Mr. Bence: And on Clydebank.

Mr. Hannan: That is not to say that it is the fault of the local authority or its excellent medical officer of health. The Montgomery Report was absolutely clear about this shortage of 146 beds. A year ago, the Under-Secretary said that within 18 months the number of beds would be increased to 790, rising to about 900 within two or three years. A year ago he said:
To some extent, therefore, the present problem in Glasgow is one of regulating admission in such a way as to admit those cases which require admission on medical and on social grounds."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th December, 1959; Vol. 615, c. 1736.]
He was suggesting that there should be some discrimination simply because the beds available were not sufficient to meet all cases. I know of cases being taken to areas outside Glasgow, to places like Paisley, in order to relieve the pressure.
I hope that the Under-Secretary will be able to give some explanation about what efforts are being made and will be able to say that within a very short time extra maternity bed provision will be made in Glasgow.

9.24 p.m.

Miss Margaret Herbison: It is not surprising that all the hon. Members who have spoken in this debate have come from the West of Scotland, that area which is covered by the Western Regional Hospital Board, an area in which more than half the population of Scotland resides.
My hon. Friend the Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) initiated the debate because of the threat of the closure of a maternity hospital in his area. I have no idea why the Board has decided to close that hospital. My hon. Friend said that it is suggested that maternity cases should go either to the Vale of Leven, which is twenty miles away, or to Glasgow.
I am certain that all medical opinion would be against a crowded area like Clydebank having to depend for its


maternity bed accommodation on a hospital twenty miles away. Sometimes cases are urgent, and a distance like that might involve the loss of both mother and child. The other proposition was answered by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Hannan).
A year ago, we debated maternity provision and the suggestions of the Montgomery Report. In many areas in Scotland we have far fewer than the number of beds which the Montgomery Report said were absolutely essential for the safety of mothers and children. The Joint Under-Secretary may not be able to reply tonight. He has been given very little time to consider this matter and we do not expect him to give a full reply on all these matters. What I hope will happen as a result of this debate is that he will be seized of the urgency of this question of a much better supply of maternity beds, particularly in the West of Scotland.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lanark (Mrs. Hart) on a number of occasions has asked Qusetions on the provision of maternity beds at Hairmyres Hospital. There is a hospital where it seems, with very little organisation, there could be a quick provision of extra maternity beds. That hospital would serve the new town of East Kilbride. East Kilbride, like most of the new towns, has a large population of young married couples and a high birth rate. The last Answer given to a Question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Lanark was very weak indeed. I feel that the Secretary of State and the Joint Under-Secretary are not seized of the seriousness of the situation.
Not many weeks ago, a pronouncement was made in Glasgow limiting the types of cases which would have any chance of getting into hospital for the birth of a child. That got much Press publicity and a great deal of criticism. It is not only that those who ought to go into hospital for the bearing of a child are not going in, but that many who do go in have to come out again far too quickly so that they may leave beds vacant for other mothers. The situation is very serious.
I come to a completely different matter which I have raised on a number of occasions. We are short of maternity

beds and there is an even more scandalous state of affairs in the west of Scotland in the lack of provision for treatment of rheumatism and research into rheumatism. In an Adjournment debate some time ago we were promised that something would be done about this. I raised the matter in Questions and I received the answer that it was possible—there was no guarantee—by the end of 1961 that provision could be made in the Baird Street Clinic.
I want to know if all the negotiations have been completed in this matter. Is the clinic being changed to provide fifty beds for the treatment of rheumatism? The west of Scotland has more than its share of rheumatism in the United Kingdom. If negotiations between the two bodies have finished, it is disgraceful that it is to take more than a year to get that clinic ready for treatment of and research into rheumatism. Our people feel very strongly about these matters.
The last point I raise is the question of Law Hospital. That has had much Press publicity in our area. It affects the people in Lanark, in the landward area, much more than in other parts of Lanarkshire. There are very grave fears that that hospital—which was built as an emergency hospital and which in a very short time has made an excellent name for itself and proved an invaluable help to the area—is either to disappear altogether or is to be relegated to the status of a third-rate hospital rather than a good general hospital which it is at present. The Joint Under-Secretary may be aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Lanark and I, with representatives from the two district councils concerned, are meeting representatives of the Western Regional Hospital Board on the 9th of this month to discuss this matter.
My last question is, what liaison is there between the Ministers and regional boards or between the Department of Health for Scotland and regional boards? Hon. Members worried about these matters are, it seems, shuttled between the Minister and the boards. We are told that the Minister is not responsible for certain things and that we have to give the boards their head I wish the Government would accept that procedure for our local authorities where


there is so much interference. There seems to be something wrong with this liaison.
Possibly there are very good people working on the Western Regional Hospital Board. They are giving their time voluntarily and I should not like to derogate at all what they are doing, but there seems a lack somewhere in the close co-ordination of the service which ought to be provided and the priorities to which they should have regard. If that is the case, the Secretary of State, who is Minister of Health for Scotland, ought not to have to wait until hon. Members on this side of the House start urging him to do something.
This has been a short debate, but I am certain that it will have served a useful purpose.

9.33 p.m.

The Joint Under Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. T. G. D. Galbraith): This debate has turned out to be rather more general than I had at first expected. The hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East (Mr. Bence) spoke on difficulties in Clydebank. The hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, West (Mr. Steele) spoke of difficulties at one of the hospitals in his constituency and then the hon. Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) took me, as he rightly said, very near to my home. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mr. Hannan) reverted to maternity problems and the hon. Lady the Member for Lanarkshire, North (Miss Herbison) touched on that and asked a number of other questions.
As the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East pointed out, there was only about an hour's warning that this debate was to take place. I said that I should be very willing to reply, not because I thought that I would be able to give a good reply at such short notice, but as an act of courtesy to the hon. Member so that he would have an opportunity of stating his case; and that I should do the best I could to obtain the necessary information on those points which I cannot answer now
Of course, what applies to the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East applies even more strongly to other hon. Members who have joined with him in taking this opportunity to raise points

concerning their constituencies. I have no doubt that the problem raised by the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East is extremely important, and it is one to which the Government have given thought and on which my right hon. Friend has a great deal of sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman says.
The hon. Lady drew attention to the difficulty that where a local need is drawn to the Government's attention, the question arises as to what they should do about it. Of course, the Government have to have regard to the local need against the background of the national position and the resources that are available. Indeed, what the Government have to do is to try to find a balance between the demands of various regions and the total resources which the Government think are available. Therefore, we have created this framework in which the National Health Service works. The general overall plan is arranged by the Department of Health for Scotland, the plan in the localities by the regional hospital boards, and, lower down than that still, by the Board of Management for each hospital.
The Western Regional Hospital Board is, as I think all hon. Members know, responsible for planning the hospital service in Glasgow and the West of Scotland. This will not satisfy the hon. Lady, but it is the case that my right hon. Friend would not wish to interfere unduly with its discretion and decisions as to which projects should have priority. As the hon. Lady has pointed out—when we were dealing with local authority matters—the gentlemen in St. Andrew's House do not always know best. Nevertheless, my right hon. Friend keeps his eye on the overall picture and he is satisfied that the authorised programme of new construction in the Western Region will provide within a reasonable time all the beds that are necessary.
The argument comes down to what is or what is not a reasonable time. The House may want to have more particulars of what the regional hospital board is in fact planning, particularly with regard to maternity cases about which the hon. Member for Maryhill spoke so feelingly. Schemes under construction at the moment will provide a total of 90 beds within a year, and 110 more beds will be provided by the end


of 1964 at Yorkhill Maternity Hospital. This will bring the city and its environments—this is important to the point raised by the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East—up to the Montgomery level and promote some reduction of bed complements in the older units in about three-and-a-half years from now.

Mr. Bence: The hon. Gentleman said "three-and-a-half years from now". Is he referring to Maryhill? Surely, on the west side of Scotland, with the huge development at Faifley, it would be more appropriate to have a maternity hospital in Drumchapel, which is now part of my hon. Friend's constituency where there is an enormously growing population. Why extend only on the east side? We want more on the west side as well.

Mr. Galbraith: I should like to refer to this problem of Clydebank itself as distinct from the wider constitutional position of my right hon. Friend in relation to particular local schemes. It is perfectly true that the regional board has no proposals involving new hospital buildings actually within the boundaries of Clydebank.
General hospital facilities—and this is the point about which the hon. Member is quarrelling—are provided in the area by the regional board at the Western Infirmary, Glasgow, where extensive development is planned. I point out to him that that is within five miles of Clydebank. There is also the new unit at Yorkhill, to which I have referred; although it is designed primarily for Glasgow, it will provide some assistance for Clydebank. Dunbartonshire will also obtain some relief from the new maternity unit being planned for the Vale of Leven, at Alexandria.

Mr. Bence: Too far away.

Mr. Galbraith: The hon. Member may say that it is too far away, but it is much better than nothing.

Miss Herbison: It surprises me when the hon. Member says that provision at the Vale of Leven is much better than nothing. Surely even a Tory Government has a higher standard than something slightly better than nothing. That has been the complaint of hon. Members on this side of the House. These figures are thrown at us about educational

building, house building and hospital building. It is "pie in the sky sometime." What our people want is this provision for maternity accommodation as soon as is humanly possible.

Mr. Galbraith: I agree entirely with the hon. Lady. Perhaps I made a mistake and used the wrong word. She says that our people want this provision as soon as humanly possible. I am trying to persuade the House that what is being provided is being provided as soon as is humanly possible.
The hon. Member referred to outpatient facilities. The regional board is considering proposals to provide an outpatients department at the Vale of Leven. The hon. Member may say that that is too far away but I cannot agree. The regional board is also considering the possible change of use—and I hope I may be forgiven if I mispronounce the name of this hospital—of the Blawarthill Hospital. I believe that it is in Glasgow, and it is very near Clydebank. Indeed, before the appointed day it belonged to Clydebank burgh. Its functions may be changed from infectious diseases to the chronic sick, and I think that that might help the hon. Member in his concern about old and frail people.

Mr. Bence: I did not speak of that.

Mr. Galbraith: In part of his speech the hon. Member referred, I think, to this point.
I realise that I have not dealt as fully as I would like with all the points which have been raised, but I have tried to show that the matter is not as static as some hon. Members have tried to indicate. The provision of maternity beds, which is what the hon. Member for Maryhill and other hon. Members are particularly concerned about, is moving forward, perhaps not as quickly as hon. Members would like but nevertheless moving forward. Although the hon. Member for Dunbartonshire, East wishes to have hospitals within his own burgh—a feeling with which I fully sympathise—he must realise that in an area such as Glasgow and its immediate environments it may often be better to have a larger and well-equipped hospital at the centre than a hospital on the outskirts of his own constituency.

Mr. Hannan: The hon. Member has given me the same reply tonight as he gave a year ago. He has said that things are not static, but this medical officer in Glasgow said that not one more bed had been provided. What can he tell us to show that the position is not static?

Mr. Galbraith: It may be that not one more bed has been provided, but the foundations and the building which will enable the beds to be provided are going up. Surely that is what the hon. Member must recognise.

Miss Herbison: I did not expect the hon. Member to give me a reply about Baird Street Clinic tonight, but will he tell me as soon as possible the reason for the hold-up there?

Mr. Galbraith: The hon. Lady spoke to me about that a few days ago. I have had inquiries made and I am sorry that I have not yet obtained the answer. I had intended to let her know the result when I obtained the answer, quite apart from this debate.

Mr. Ross: Will the hon. Gentleman assure me that he has in mind the question of Ballochmyle Hospital and the casualty ward?

Mr. Galbraith: The same comment applies to the hon. Member for Kilmarnock. I am sorry that my inquiries on that matter are not yet concluded.

Orders of the Day — SHIPBUILDING, SCOTLAND

9.45 p.m.

Mr. William Small: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Scotstoun (Mr. Small) requires the leave of the House to speak again.

Mr. Small: If I may have the leave of the House, I should like to address myself to the Secretary of State for Scotland on a question which arose in my constituency during the Recess and on current developments which have taken place since. I should like to address the Minister about engineering in Scotland, where we have always had a heavy industry.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. John Maclay): On a point of order. I do not want to interrupt the hon. Member for Glasgow, Scotstoun (Mr. Small) but I should like some guidance from you, Mr. Speaker. Owing to a combination of I think understandable circumstances, we have had a rather interesting time this evening. I am full of admiration for the devotion to duty of all Scottish Members and Scottish Ministers, but, to begin with, I was informed this evening that a Mr. Vince or a Mr. Finch, or someone of some such name, intended to raise a matter on the Adjournment. With a little care we worked that out correctly. Secondly, I was informed that another hon. Member, name unknown, intended to raise the question of building something. As this information had been conveyed to the Scottish Office, I assumed that it would be a question on school building. I now understand that it is on shipbuilding. As I have no Ministerial responsibilitiy for that, I am a little in the dark as to how to handle this.

Mr. Speaker: The point always maintained by my predecessors—and I desire to maintain it—is that it is a great public misfortune that matters should be raised on the Adjournment without due notice to Ministers. I feel sure that the hon. Member for Glasgow, Scotstoun (Mr. Small) would be as appreciative of that as anybody else. I am in a little difficulty, and as usual I am in the hands of the House. I was not in the Chair when some hon. Member rose and the


hon. Member for Scotstoun attempted to warn the Chair about something in this line. Obviously the lines of communication have broken down. I am in the hands of the House about this.

Mr. Maclay: There was an attempt to convey to us that the question of shipbuilding would be raised but it went to the wrong Minister and probably in the wrong form. I simply want to make this explanation because what I shall do, without any discourtesy, is to listen carefully to what the hon. Member says, and perhaps he will understand if I do not reply, because it would not be appropriate, without warning, for me to deal with a matter for which another Minister is responsible.

Mr. William Ross: But, surely, the Secretary of State has an overall responsibility in relation to the industrial well-being of Scotland—

Mr. Speaker: Order. There is no question about Ministerial responsibility. There is a question about the advisability of debating something without notice to Ministers, which is a very different point.

Mr. Small: I recognise the hazards and handicaps of entering into a discussion on shipbuilding in Scotland generally at this time. During the Recess I spoke to shipbuilders and found that they were seeking to diversify their industry by going from heavy engineering to lighter engineering. We have suffered in the past from this sort of change in the pattern of life in Scotland.
I served my time many years ago in steam, but techniques have changed and I want to draw attention to the need to take advantage of present technical changes for the benefit of Scotland generally. In both the engineering sense and in the sense of capital, we missed the aircraft engineering industry in Scotland, and we also lost the motor-car industry and, as a result, lost the Chance to develop necessary modern engineering skills. I meet many reasonably well-educated young men in Scotland who are not getting the chance to develop skills because of the falling-off in shipbuilding in Scotland, which makes the shipbuilders themselves inclined to look for some other types of engineering work for their yards.
I suggest respectfully that now is the time to propagate the idea of going forward with a nuclear merchantman. I know that this may be uneconomic at present but if the first nuclear merchant ship of, say, 50,000 tons is sent to Merseyside or the Tyne, the development of the necessary concomitant skills will be lost to Scotland.
I know that one difficulty is that this is a matter more or less for the Ministry of Transport in terms of geography, of technical change and the development of nuclear propulsion for the future, but I seek to invoke the services and assistance of the Secretary of State and the Ministry in this field, so that the technical colleges may be assisted to train the apprentices and the instrument artificers of the future. If we do not recruit this type of apprentice, and so acquire these skills for Scotland, the magnetic pull of technical change and training will be southwards and we will again lose.
Scotland should be making its stake now by building up a skilled labour force in this field, and the shipbuilding industry seems the right one to initiate this, but if the shipbuilders diversify their work from hard shipbuilding to making component parts the industry will weaken. We have to keep a strong shipbuilding industry, and a nuclear-propelled vessel would be much in our favour—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I require, personally, the assistance of the hon. Member. Whatever the Minister says, I have to listen to something for which there is Ministerial responsibility. The hon. Member may well be developing such a subject, but must explain to me wherein lies the Ministerial responsibility in regard to what he is saying.

Mr. Small: With all due respect, Mr. Speaker, I suggest that the development of educational skills in the labour force is the responsibility of the Minister. If we do not have such a skilled labour force in the Clyde area, we will not, at the end of the day, go forward as we should. I am appealing to the Secretary of State now, when discussions are going on in shipbuilding, to assist as far as possible in ensuring that such a development project comes first to a Scottish port.

9.54 p.m.

Mr. Thomas Fraser: I should like to say a word or two in support of what my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Scotstoun (Mr. Small) has been saying, and I hope, Mr. Speaker, that you will not feel that any of us is trying to put something across on the Secretary of State or on the House.
This is an extremely important matter. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Ross) tried to suggest earlier, the Secretary of State has considerable responsibilities for the economic well-being of Scotland. We have made a practice for some years of spending two days annually discussing the White Paper on Industry and Employment in Scotland.
My hon. Friend the Member for Scotstoun, in dealing with shipbuilding, has called attention to the need for our being equipped educationally, and of using our technical and technological institutes and the like to prepare ourselves for the new motive power in the shipping industry. It seems to some of us that we have been losing out on too many counts in Scotland. If one looks back over the past hundred years, when most of our transport was by rail, one can reflect on the great part that Scottish engineers played in producing the locomotives and rolling stock. Then, we did very well in shipbuilding and we have provided more ships than any other shipbuilding country. In fact, the River Clyde has produced more shipping than any other river in the world.
We have seen changes in transport which have taken transport from rail to the roads, and our motor cars have been made outside Scotland. We have seen transport going into the air, and the aircraft are being made outside Scotland. My hon. Friend's plea is that inasmuch as we continue to use sea transport for a long time to come, let us for goodness' sake, in Scotland, not miss the boat on this one if we are to get a new form of motive power in our sea transport. That is exactly the point.
The Secretary of State gave us the White Paper on Technical Education a number of years ago. We had a short discussion upstairs this morning on technical education and the training of youth. We were given, once again,

statistics about the progress which has been made in the launching of the programme the cost of which will be slightly in excess of £10 million. What my hon. Friend the Member for Scotstoun is asking tonight is that the Secretary of State will recognise that nuclear propulsion is coming quickly, and that if we in Scotland are to remain in shipbuilding we had better be in the van of this development.
If we are to be in the forefront, we must turn our attention to this matter in our institutes of higher learning. Our young engineers, technicians and technologists of the future who will be in shipbuilding engineering had better be in nuclear propulsion as soon as may be. It is a reasonable request that my hon. Friend should make at this time that we should all be fully conscious of this great change which is taking place in the highly industrialised world in which we live and that we should not always trail behind. It does not do for any of us, Scotland or Britain, always to seem to be denigrating Britain or Scotland, but there are many spheres in which we have been seen to be trailing behind other countries who used to look up to us as a country whose example was worth while following.
We were the first country to harness atomic power for peaceful purposes, thanks to the publicly-owned Atomic Energy Authority and the work undertaken at Harwell. [Laughter.] That is no laughing matter. It is something of which every citizen should be tremendously proud. We are not in the van. We were in the forefront in using atomic power for peaceful purposes, but we have not been in the forefront in using it for propelling ships.
There is, however, no reason why we should not do our utmost to catch up on those who got in front of us. In any event, we are still one of the greatest shipping and shipbuilding countries and the River Clyde, beside which my hon. Friend the Member for Scotstoun has his constituency, has, I repeat, produced more ships than any other river in the world. Inasmuch as we believe that nuclear propulsion is not only on the way, but has arrived, we want to be certain that the Clyde will continue to play its full part in the shipping industry for a long time to come.

9.59 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. John Maclay): I have taken part in many debates on the general industrial scene in Scotland. My dilemma this evening was that I did not know precisely what subject would be raised and that the opportunity of briefing myself from the proper source was absent. I have listened with the greatest care to the speeches which have been made on this important subject. I will study them and see that they are drawn to the attention of my right hon. Friend, who has rather more direct responsibility in these matters.
I agree that we in Scotland have a great reputation in shipbuilding. We have had it for many years. Work is going on in nuclear propulsion. Scotland is not by any means out of it. I do not want to try to go into details, because I

am not properly briefed and it would be unwise to do so. It is important that we should keep a close watch on what is going on and I sincerely hope and trust that Scottish shipbuilding firms—

It being Ten o'clock, the Motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Noble.]

Mr. Maclay: I shall not detain the House from adjourning for much longer. Without repeating myself, I appreciate the great importance of this matter and will see that it is carefully studied both by my right hon. Friend and by myself.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at one minute past Ten o'clock.